Creative Component: A New Scene from the New Employee’s Perspective
After that long tour in the office, I was invited to occupy my cubicle. I could not help feeling uneasy after learning the absurd instructions. Suddenly, the bell rang, and all the people in the office abruptly got up and went to the room next to the main hall. Not knowing what model of behavior to accept, I decided to give myself up to the movement of the crowd and follow everyone else. In the hall, there was a huge screen and many chairs for workers. All the people entering the hall seemed to know what was going on as they stayed calm and, like trained dogs, could find their places without any confusion.
Suddenly, a man appeared on the screen, holding papers in his hands. After a while, it turned out that it was a national television newscast. The host happily talked about the new decisions of the eternal President. This week, the President banned street kissing and skirts for women and introduced the death penalty for using the telephone. Everyone in the hall greeted the President’s decision with applause. The presenter continued to discuss the country’s achievements in a recently started war with a neighboring state. We were shown rockets launching into residential buildings and the national army entering the enemy’s cities. People in the hall rose from their seats and cursed the new enemies of the nation.
The tour upon arrival at the office and the scene of watching a large TV set formed one single picture for me. It suddenly became way too clear why people felt alone in our office. Being afraid of my own thoughts, I attempted to suppress them and tried not to pay attention to what was happening around me. Despite trying hard to look normal and conceal my disappointment, I knew deep inside that I would not be able to conform to the ubiquitous absurdity and live there happily, even with enough money. Nothing could stop me from fleeing from the country of nonsense.
Writer’s Statement
The short story “Orientation” written by Daniel Orozco is a great ground to explore the nature of people’s loneliness and alienation. Loneliness can arise from a variety of causes, ranging from losing loved ones or living under regimes that seek to erase individual differences and distract people from the truth. The creative piece above is a scene that I would add to Orozco’s story as an ending.
Orozco’s theme of brainwashing has inspired the new scene written for this assignment. Orozco’s original story consists of a stream of relatively absurd information that the new employee is obliged to memorize to adopt the only correct line of behavior. For instance, the protagonist is instructed on his phone’s location just to be told to “never answer the phone” a few seconds later (Orozco 1). The new employee is supposed to remember an unnecessary process for seeking permission to make an emergency call, including “asking an immediate supervisor” or talking to “Philip Spiers” if the former is unavailable (Orozco 1). In Orozco’s story, the supervisor urges the employee to follow dozens of weird rules and keep in mind the exceptions without questioning such policies’ validity. This absurdity has inspired me to further develop the brainwashing theme. My ending takes indoctrination to the extreme by relating it to the topics of war and the pointless decisions of “the eternal President.” Thus, Orozco’s milder depictions of indoctrination have become a great source of inspiration.
The new scene changes the original story in two ways, which is evident when the two versions are compared and contrasted. Firstly, unlike the original ending that represents the manager’s direct speech, the new scene consists of the instructed employee’s thoughts and observations, thus changing the way how this person is seen. Orozco’s story makes the employee’s personality invisible, implying that it could be easy for him to blend into the crowd (4). In contrast, my alternative ending reveals that the trainee is a thoughtful person incapable of following pointless rules and accepting information from external sources without taking a critical look at it. Secondly, although both versions highlight the brainwashing/indoctrination theme, the new ending differs from the original thematically as it touches upon blind obedience in the context of politics. Orozco’s ending is less serious as the manager casually repeats that he will “sit in there” after revealing shocking details about a serial killer and his victim selection process (4). In addition to the original story’s themes, the alternative ending seeks to reveal how indoctrination represents a nationwide trend, thus introducing the new theme of power distribution.
My decision to make these changes relates to achieving two distinct purposes. Firstly, the added scene helps me to reflect on how the company’s weird practices and culture could be a continuation of the national regime rather than something existing in isolation from greater trends. From my perspective, the original ending, including how the manager repeats “that’s my cubicle” and ends his speech, leaves the key message too open for interpretation (Orozco 4). Without an obvious ending, everyone will bring their own experiences and feelings to the plot, which will make this story uniquely understood by everyone. Secondly, I have changed the narrator in order to take a different perspective on the company’s life and explore the employee’s reactions to the weird corporate rules. Overall, the changes depict how smaller trends, such as company-specific rules, prepare citizens for accepting even more absurd laws and tolerating everything they hear.
Work Cited
Orozco, Daniel. Orientation: And Other Stories. Faber & Faber, 2011.