Summary Of Herrera's Short Story 'The Objects'

For centuries, authors and playwrights have picked apart the mechanisms and behaviors of the ruling class with a dispassionate dignity--the predecessors to modern-day satire and humor. As the time passed, the material morphed into valid criticisms of the general populace of the ever changing world; the words of Shakespeare gave way to those of Orwell in his classic 1984. In 2015, author Yuri Herrera published a short story called “The Objects,” in which he recognizes the faults of human nature by drawing several parallels between his fictional world and society today through the qualities of the narrator, Rafa, and the building. In his writing, there are several situations where he uses allegories to help the reader bridge the gap between his words and the reality. “The Objects” starts with the narrator and his friend Rafa waiting in a line outside a vestibule, and Rafa is staring at it with a seething hatred. Each morning, they go through the vestibule, change into humans and work, then at night, they go back through the vestibule and change into something non-human but reflective of their character. Rafa is transformed into a louse, and the narrator into a rat. The duo know that above them in their building is cats and dogs, but can only speculate what …show more content…
Rafa the louse is the embodiment of a driven individual fated by the class he was born into, and the objects at the top are merely figurations of the elite who unapologetically reap the rewards of the legions placed below them. After that, Herrera touches base with how the Earth is decaying as a product of human habit. “The Objects“ could teach the reader to open their eyes and figure out how they stand in the world today and how any person they come across could be on any level in life; thus, it is important to help the lice and rats of society climb to the top if they so