In Song of the Factory Worker, the poet uses mostly imagery and personification of a building to communicate her feelings. However, these fall short, because she does not follow up her images and does not continue with what might have been very powerful metaphors. The title is a prime example, because the poem bears no resemblance to a song. We are not told why it should be read as a song, and we do not hear it. We do hear sounds, but they have little meaning and less emotional content. They seem rather sterile. She could be referring to the songs of the factory workers she mentions as something she will miss, but then the title should be changed.
The author calls the building a vampire and says it will draw her back to it, and that others have fallen under its spell, “sewing their lives away”. However, she does not carry through on this powerful metaphor, which she expresses as the less powerful simile, but drops it in an attempt to capture sounds for the song. These are supposed to represent things which will draw her back, but the only sound which seems to have any emotional content is “the happy laughter of girls”.
The imagery in the beginning of the red brick building with many windows is not used for anything else, except as a name and a closure at the end. This could be a really strong image. What do the windows look like? Are they clean or dirty? Are they the vacant eyes of this building? Can the workers see out of them, and if yes, what do they see and how do they feel about it. I think this poet lost what might have been a very powerful poem to the minimalism of post modernist style (Post modernism definition ). It simply seems that she could have done a lot more with these images.
Deborah Boe shows us what can be done with such a theme as factory work. She builds a powerful picture of a female factory worker through what she says. She begins with the image of the worker standing all day over the hot glue machine. We cannot imagine what that is like until she tells us. We feel her power when she says that she make the metal shanks lie down on the shoe bottoms. Then she follows that up with a quick explanation of her power:”It’s simple, but the lasts weigh, give you big arms.”
The next couple of lines tell us not only about her power, but something about her culture and class: “If I hit my boyfriend now, in the supermarket parking lot, he knows I hit him. Following this striking image we see another powerful image of the dangers of the work as she tells us that Phyllis had long hair before the glue machine got it. Then she tells up about the time the machine “ate up” her shirt. She follows this with a statement how it is a good thing that people leave you alone and don’t ask what you’re thinking.
The narrator’s thoughts are about the death of her grandpa that week and how she feels that his sould has moved into the apartment. She describes eggs falling and a lamp breaking. The poet communicate the superstitious nature of the narrator and the stress of her very ordinary life. Finally we understand this very [powerful character when she explains how her company had a contest of workers to sort out layoffs. One really special line has echoes of old tongue twisters from childhood: “to see which shankers shanked fastest” It serves first to set a new mood and then to remind us of the rhythm of her work. It also forces us to slow down and she follows that with a simple statement that she is not embarrassed to have won. Now we know that she will not be laid off. This is calming and she slips into contemplating the autumn turning of the leaves and the coming of winter. The final line is extremely powerful, but its power is not in the words, but in what they evoke: “you begin to see your breath rise out of you like your own ghost each morning you come here.
Each reader will react to this differently, but it has a chilling effect on all.
This poet has successfully used imagery of an ordinary person to make really powerful observations about our lives, our culture and our myriad blessings, as those who read this are indeed better off than this factory worker. Though we may not be any happier. The poet’s line spacing is inspired. It governs the pace and emphasizes certain words, such as isolating “got it” when she talks about the machine getting Phyllis’s long hair. She does the same thing with the next few sentences, spacing them so that we center on the chilling images of this machine that eats things, like hair, shirts and maybe parts of people. This also adds power to the last part when she says that she almost doesn’t need to look at what she is doing.
In Factory Jungle Jim Daniels starts off with a really serious train of thought about the danger of the machine the narrator works. We see him daydreaming about the “ropes shining down” and we understand that he is talking about sunbeams on dusty air. He says they are the sun on its way to the time clock. This is a way of showing that they can see the time by the changes in light. He gives us one line that is a bit curious: “My veins fill with welding flux.” After he tells us that he feels like he doesn’t belong there he explains where it is, behind the biggest press in the plant. We understand the earlier line about the welding flux then and we get an image of some huge welding machine he runs (Hot press factory – hot press factory limited and more (such as hot press factory,press in nut factory,press grill factory) ). He thinks “about what that mad elephant could do to a hand.”
We understand now that his job is both boring and dangerous, a formidable combination, since boredom does not contribute to alertness. The next few lines are absolutely hilarious as we get a very strong image of him grabbing a light rope and swinging around the plant, making people think they are seeing things, up higher than the cage in the overhead crane, throwing off all his work gear and flying out of the plant to freedom. When we come back to reality, the parts are building up in the rack, but he pauses anyway to rip open his coveralls and give out with a Tarzan yell which goes unheard in the noise, though he yells as loud as he can. This section is both delightful and informative. We understand how he feels trapped, and the words the poet uses to create these wonderful images are quite ordinary, but the resulting images raise adrenaline as we read. This is a powerful use of ordinary words.
These three poets each have a different way to express their thought about factory work, and two of them succeed admirably in creating something that resounds in the reader. Perhaps factory work is not a good subject for post modernist writing, since it is, itself, a post modernist horror. Of course, it is also safer now than in the past, so maybe it really is not a good subject for most modern poets. The horrors of nineteenth century factories are laid out is absolutely teeth gnashing detail in Henry Morley’s prose poem, Ground in the Mill, as he describes how children in factory work are killed by the machines. (Freedgood 261)
References
Hot press factory – hot press factory limited and more (such as hot press factory,press in nut factory,press grill factory). Web.
Post modernism definition. Web.
Freedgood, E. (Ed.). (2003). Factory Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain. New York: Oxford University Press.