What would it be like if an average office worker turned into a rat or a louse at night and returned back to his average job during the day? These events, along with challenges the characters face, take place in Yuri Herrera’s dystopian short story, “The Objects.” In “The Objects,” the author uses many different hardships and aspects of the story that the main characters face to symbolize real world struggles, such as immigration and social hierarchy. Firstly, a major theme of the story is immigration and its effect on immigrants. When all of the characters cross the vestibule, a passageway from their offices into another world, they transform into different animals (Herrera 52). The vestibule in the story could represent the border the
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This is similar to real world immigrants who will work as hard as they need to in order to earn a green card or to be able to live in the United States legally. The narrator refers to them as “pestilent being[s],” or, in other words, a destructive annoyance (Herrera 52). Considering Herrera’s Mexican heritage, this could very easily symbolize the way Americans view hispanic immigrants. The main characters transform into animals commonly known as scavengers and live off of other animals, much like how immigrants may struggle to find resources in their new country. Also, the narrator mentions that in “the vestibule a rat is a rat is a rat, even if sometimes it’s still got human opinions (Herrera 53).” This quote could represent the idea that sometimes, in America, immigrants are viewed as rats--nasty little animals; however, the author is making a point that immigrants are still people with valid opinions and feelings. In “The Objects,” the narrator and Rafa speak about the higher-ups in an envious way, as if they are jealous of their statuses in the office, and it seems like they resent them because of it. Immigrants could very well have similar feeling towards Americans. Lastly, when the narrator walks into the higher-ups’ office, it is clear that the other people in the room look down on him (Herrera 53). Immigrants are sometimes looked down upon when they live in a different country; they are under the impression that they are not accepted and are inferior to the country’s natives. The way immigrants feel when they begin to live in the United States is clearly symbolized in “The
This is similar to real world immigrants who will work as hard as they need to in order to earn a green card or to be able to live in the United States legally. The narrator refers to them as “pestilent being[s],” or, in other words, a destructive annoyance (Herrera 52). Considering Herrera’s Mexican heritage, this could very easily symbolize the way Americans view hispanic immigrants. The main characters transform into animals commonly known as scavengers and live off of other animals, much like how immigrants may struggle to find resources in their new country. Also, the narrator mentions that in “the vestibule a rat is a rat is a rat, even if sometimes it’s still got human opinions (Herrera 53).” This quote could represent the idea that sometimes, in America, immigrants are viewed as rats--nasty little animals; however, the author is making a point that immigrants are still people with valid opinions and feelings. In “The Objects,” the narrator and Rafa speak about the higher-ups in an envious way, as if they are jealous of their statuses in the office, and it seems like they resent them because of it. Immigrants could very well have similar feeling towards Americans. Lastly, when the narrator walks into the higher-ups’ office, it is clear that the other people in the room look down on him (Herrera 53). Immigrants are sometimes looked down upon when they live in a different country; they are under the impression that they are not accepted and are inferior to the country’s natives. The way immigrants feel when they begin to live in the United States is clearly symbolized in “The