Orozco's Short Story in the Classroom Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Orozco's Short Story in the Classroom - Essay Example Orozco's work is filled with material that is almost Kafka-esque in its absurdity. For example, People at this company must arbitrarily fill their day with what is in their inbox, no matter how long it would take, instead of simply changing their workflow. â€Å"You must pace your work. What do I mean? I’m glad you asked that. We pace our work according to the eight-hour workday. If you have twelve hours of work in your IN box, for example, you must compress that work into the eight-hour day. If you have one hour of work in your IN box, you must expand that work to ï ¬ ll the eight-hour day. That was a good question. Feel free to ask questions. Ask too many questions, however, and you may be let go†. This quote alone can be used to generate two exercises. First: Is Orozco's character an actual person, or intended to represent one? I think not. Orozco's introduction character is some dream figure, some devilish mockery, much like a character in a Dilbert strip. A Dilbe rt strip of the Pointy Haired Boss could be compared to Orozco's orientation with fruitful results. Second: Students could be asked to write a story that plays up the absurdity of everyday moments too. An exercise on Kafka, Dilbert and Orozco, creating a short story that uses magical realist elements to highlight absurdity in the real world, would be a fantastic exercise in composition. The orientation is being offered to the reader: It is second-person narration, and particularly skillful at that. Second-person narration is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which being the way that is constrains the likely description and characterization approaches. In a first-person narration, where the protagonist is the narrator, the reader is given easy insights into the narrator's mind. The narrator can tell what he thinks about people, what he sees, describe rooms and situations, and make clear his motivation. A third-person narration, either omniscient or not, can similarly descr ibe characters, environments, settings and motivations without seeming out of place or jarring. But a second-person narration will rarely have these elements, because most people do not say, â€Å"Do you see how that desk is brown and the chair is red? Enjoy the comfortable leather of the chair†. Making what the second-person storytelling says plausible is difficult, but Orozco accomplishes it beautifully. Orozco is able to describe a workplace without describing it specifically, both as emotional and physical setting. We learn about fire exits, the Mr. Coffee, and get a