Summary Of Work In Corporate America By Russell Baker

Mood is the direct result of an encounter with another person or situation and reflects how they feel on the inside. Mood is the aftermath of someone’s or something’s tone. The manner in which another acts affects how a situation is perceived. This holds true for social situations as well as for written ones. Authors often consider the mood they hope to convey, and then choose the best tone to attain that reaction. The mood an author wishes to embody influences the tone with which he or she will write. The desire for happiness requires exciting word choice and inspirational language; a mysterious mood entails cryptic ideas and haunting scenes. Every portion of a written piece must masterfully be calculated to achieve this purpose. Some

In his essay “Work in Corporate America,” Russell Baker creates a dismal tone throughout the course of his essay through word choice and repetition, thus pushing the reader into contemplative mood.
Baker uses a bleak tone throughout the course of his essay, thus preparing his reader for the mood inspired at the conclusion. The first paragraph begins with the eyes of a child attempting to comprehend the idea of the workplace. Baker’s words “blank and dispirited” (429) enrich his tone, and perfectly capture the purpose of his essay. Already, the reader feels his heart sink in his chest, and he braces himself for oncoming disappointment. Later, Baker explains what modern jobs entail. No longer is the human race building lasting creation with their bare hands, rather it is building machines to do the job for them. This is not to imply that humanity falls into

He accomplishes this through the description of a singular man’s workday: a man passes throughout his office with paper; lunches with paper; talks about paper; and edits paper (Baker 450). Paper. Paper, paper, paper. The author repeats this word twenty-six times in the span of only a few paragraphs. Twenty-six. After a word is echoed too many times, it loses meaning, and awkwardly falls off of the tongue. As Coe states: “…you should think about the image and attitudes your words will project” (213). The attitude projected is one of pointlessness. By the time the reader finishes reading this portion of the essay, their heads swims with the word and it has lost all meaning. Baker employs the strategy of anaphora to exemplify how the working field has lost purpose. This technique increases the dismal tone, and the audience falls into an exhausted state. This mirrors the mood that Baker creates. The word paper has become pointless just as the workplace has become pointless. It is similar to the metaphor technique employed in the first half of the essay. The reader leaves the essay thinking and contemplating what point the working world has reached. Everything about this second half of the essay was written for a specific purpose, and Baker’s bitter tone builds up the tension and nourishes the thought provoking mood that he