Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

WORK - Coggle Diagram

- - - - In Severance by Ling Ma, the protagonist Candance is a business woman in New York City who is stuck to the busy New York lifestyle. When the spread of a deadly virus, Shen Fever, came to New York, the city shut down and became deserted. Candace however, in the midst of this global shut down, continued to work. Because she was so routine oriented, she was not ready to flip her entire world upside down. Candace continued to work as an escape from the reality around her. The threat of the real world loomed as she worked and worked on.
      - “I emptied myself, lost myself in the work. I got up. I went to work in the morning. I went home in the evening. I repeated the routine.”
  - - - "Miss Kenton, please don't think me unduly improper in not ascending to see my father in his deceased condition just at this moment. You see, I know my father would have wished me to carry on just now." (pg 95)
      - In Remains of The Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, Mr. Stevens is an incredibly devoted butler who puts everything he has into his work. While he puts in effort and dignity and discipline, he also puts in his feelings, more specifically, the feelings he is trying to repress. When Mr. Stevens’ father is ill and dying, Mr. Stevens chooses to tend to his work rather than his family. Even though he was close to his father, he chooses to focus on work rather than what may cause him to hurt. His avoidance is funneled through his job, and unfortunately his feelings for Miss Kenton get lost in his work as well.
  - - - “When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”
      - In Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata, the protagonist of the story, Keiko Furukura, doesn’t fit into society’s mold of “normal.” Once she turns 18 however, she finds herself working at a convenience store, being put to the task of completing everyday mundane routines. However, 18 years later she is still working there. Keiko uses her work as a safety net. At her store she is normal because she was able to learn how. Because there is no way of learning to be “normal” in the real world, she escapes into her work, keeping to the only place she can be seen as normal.