Capitalism In Kathy Page's Clients

Superior Essays
In the story, Clients by Kathy Page, the character of Martin is the embodiment Capitalism. Like a sort of bourgeoisie business man he attempts to exploit the couple, and profit from their lack of ability to communicate with each other. This mirrors the dominant capitalist classes attempts to suppress the subordinate working class, in order to continue to gain excess wealth while to working class falters. The couple voices their concerns of lacking enough time for leisure while being bound to their jobs. Martin dismisses such ideas by making them into a joke. As the story progresses the couple starts to question Martin and some of the ideologies that come hand in hand with capitalism. The questioning makes Martin anxious and uneasy, he tries …show more content…
The narrator himself mentions that his job has something to do with managing other people 's time (Page 105). This is ironic because he can’t even organize his own time. This reflects one of the major problems when it comes to work and capitalism, workers don’t see themselves in what they are doing. In the case of the narrator and Anna, it is as if capitalism is taking away their time and selling to back to them in the form of Martin. It is a very common practice in capitalism, to pay a worker little and then sell the product offering at a higher price. In the case what is being taken for little is the couples time, and Martin is now selling it back for about three times what it is worth. It is also quite interesting that Anna and the narrator both speak of wanting more time to waste (Page 105). Where 's Martin says he charges such a high price so that he won 't have to leave and let another appointment loom over the night (Page 103). This is quite ironic, considering for the couple, their work looms over their life, sucking most of their energy away. Yet Martin has all the time in the world capitalizing off the couple, his biggest worry being whether or not he will be able to fit his scuba diving class it that week (Page 105). He goes on to tell them that “you sell something to leave the rest of you free (106)”. Yet the couple has nothing left for free, they can 't even conversate with each other without having some sort of help. The reflects the proletariat’s struggle to maintain freedom and individuality while the bourgeoisie has all this time, and are free to do as the want. The couple is experiencing, as Marx would say, commodity fetishism. The are made to put value into things that have no objective value. They put value into speaking with Martin, telling him about their day and conversing with him as if he has value. When in reality he is charging them to be there, he doesn 't even consider

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Does money truly buy happiness? Many people don’t believe that it does, but in The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan lives her life searching for money that she can hide all of her problems in. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, A wealthy man named Gatsby throws outrageous parties to attract his old love, Daisy Buchanan, who lives across the New York Sound with her wealthy and arrogant husband Tom. The novel revolves around a group of affairs and lies told by all of the characters in the story. In the end, most of the characters realize the hard way, that money doesn’t buy happiness but in fact ruins most of their lives.…

    • 1579 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Oftentimes, in our society we are quick to judge other people. These judgements may be based on a number of factors, such as appearance, background, or employment. Due to stereotypes, we often look down on people who work lower level (and therefore lower-income) jobs. Although jobs are often seen as an extension of a person, the connotations associated with certain career choices should not define an individual. In “Serving in Florida,” Barbara Ehrenreich explores the lifestyle of lower-working class America.…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Not for Profit is made up of seven chapters and each chapter is reinforcing and strengthening the author’s main arguments. Martha Nussbaum’s work revolves around a call for the rescue of educational system on a global scale, particularly issues relating to promotion of knowledge, skills, and personalities necessary for a democratic citizenship. Earlier in her work, she articulates that, “We are in the midst of a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance… No, I mean a crisis that goes largely unnoticed, like a cancer; a crisis that is likely to be, in the long run, far more damaging to the nature of democratic self-government: a worldwide crisis in education” (p.1-2). After her projection of these problems to the world, she further points out the sources to these problems in the area of social, economic, and intellectual developments that in one way or the other are overseeing the educational…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Bureaucracy is an organization that focuses on a system of government in which the authority within the bureaucracy is a hierarchy which shows who clearly is in change. . “First, authority is hierarchically structured, making a clear chain of command. Second, selection of personal is competitive and based on demonstrated merit. Third, a specialized division of labor allows for the more efficient completion of assigned tasks. Fourth, bureaucracies are governed by formal, impersonal rules that regulate all facets of the organization.”…

    • 1541 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Nickel And Dimed Emergency

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages

    An emergency is a serious, unexpected, often dangerous situation that requires immediate action. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, writer Barbara Ehrenreich uses the term emergency to describe how low-wage working Americans should be seen: “…we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans-as a state of emergency.” (214). Workers are in this desperate situation due to low-wages and long hours, unaffordable housing, as well as an employment system that succeeds in keeping workers down. Through her 1998 undercover investigation as a low-wage worker in three different states, Ehrenreich discovers that low-wage workers experience extremely poor living conditions only to barely survive from day-to-day.…

    • 1642 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout the United States, people, different as they may be, have one goal and desire that is the same. For lots of those people, that goal is just to get around the challenges that one day brings upon them. For many, they will do whatever it takes to provide financially for themselves and or their family, in an attempt to build supportable and desirable lives. This concept is known as the American Dream. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s, Nickled and Dimed and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the American Dream is an ever lasting concept that is perceived differently by both of the book’s main characters.…

    • 1772 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Martin has suffered financial and personal obstructions in his life, also preached a philosophy of undiluted pessimism. He always expected the worst from the world and nothing but the worst that's why he's a flawed philosopher, he often had troubles seeing the world as it really was. He even took issue with Candide’s statement, “"And yet there is some good in the world," replied Candide. "Maybe so," said Martin, "but it has escaped my knowledge."…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Allison Pugh’s the Tumbleweed Society, the book offers insight into the cultural deprivation and insecurities within the lives of individuals and the workplace society. Using eighty individual interviews, Pugh offers exploration in the lives of people from different social class standings as well as gender and racial segregation pertaining to the work force. Noting specifically the feeling of severe job insecurity and the fact that most believe that job insecurity is purely inevitable. Along with job insecurity Pugh focuses on how people cope with flexibility in the workplace and discusses the hardships of how the fast paced and technological advancements have interfiered within the intimate lives of families.…

    • 1384 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Barbara Ehrenreich argues that those in the workforce of minimum wage face struggles that affect their life styles, however they fight back tooth and nail too overcome these situations. In chapter two of Nickel and Dimed Barbara declares that those who fall under the ethnicity of “white” have a much higher chance of obtaining a job compared to someone of color. While reading this chapter some struggles that minimum waged workers faced are: housing standards, being able to afford food and having to face harassment from either bosses and/or co – workers. Furthermore, Barbara argues that people in minimum wage are forced to either fail or live in comfort. Her argument is valuable because it shows the system is very bias and is set to favor those…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Every day there is something unique and novel that human beings can learn from unfamiliar and even familiar things that take part in their daily life. Most people approach the world with a beginner’s mind, approaching the world with preconceptions, assumptions, and opinions, because of personal experiences acquired during their lifetime. It has become human nature to think in a habitual way, in which events, thoughts, and feelings are preoccupying the individual’s mind, which in turn is deterring a person’s ability to think and see the other perspective. It is important to break this habitual ways of thinking and eventually obtain “sociological imagination” or the ability to understand the macro-scale and micro-scale factors that are interplaying…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Tyrell's Effectiveness

    • 1946 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In this paper the client’s name is Tyrell and he is thirty years old and he works at a well-respected law firm, where he works as a clerk at the firm. Tyrell, is African-American male and he is homosexual. He just recently graduated from law school two years ago and is well on his way starting his career. At this job, he works long hours and the job is very demanding. Tyrell sometimes goes several days without sleep, because of his job and the demand that it carries.…

    • 1946 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Capitalism: A Love Story is a documentary produced and written by Michael Moore. The film is about the financial crisis that we as America has been affecting us in the 21st century and how we are dealing with it. During the movie Michael Moore analyzed the consequences that lead to the political and economic troubles that America has been facing. Moore believes that we should rise above capitalism. During the movie, he touched on subjects like home foreclosure, for-profit prisons, and poverty-level wages of many workers.…

    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    What Remains of ourselves when money is allowed to cloud our Humanity? Tom McCarthy’s, Remainder, is about a nameless narrator who is recovering from an accident. He doesn’t remember much about it. “Technology.…

    • 1647 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Classism; unfair treatment due to one’s social or economic class. One is treated differently based on their social class; lower, upper, or higher class. The treatment of each class can be unfair, as society gives each class different amounts of respect. The discrimination one feels due to their class can stop their progress in various ways, which all in all prevents them from realizIng their full ability. The lower class is often discriminated as they are looked down at and others feel superior to them.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Feminist Consumerism

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages

    With the growth of consumer culture and globalization, especially in capitalistic societies, more attention is being paid to the growing role of consumers. More specifically, scholars like Wei Luo, Angela McRobbie and Mary Lou Roberts have closely analyzed female consumerism and its effects in the empowerment of women. Is so-called feminist consumerism a tool of empowerment for females within modern society, or is it another system which perpetuates traditional patriarchal ideals? Scholars generally hold “two dichotomous standpoints” (Luo 2) on such feminist consumerism, either embracing it as the assertion of free choice on the part of the woman (Luo) or another form of “gender retrenchment and the undoing of feminism” (McRobbie 542).…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Superior Essays