How an Author Can Use Work

Developing themes and characters by describing jobs

To honor Labor Day, I want to talk about the role of jobs and work in Community Day.

The novel is set in a depressed rural area. People have become atomized and suspicious. The sense of community has been lost.

When a society is healthy, work doesn’t dominate our lives, but it does contribute meaningfully to them. When a society is unhealthy, work contributes to the sickness.

I wanted to emphasize this theme from the very start. So at the beginning of Chapter 2—after a few essential characters are introduced—the narrator starts the discussion of work:

Most families have been in the area for generations. The locals now generally work for the prison, the school system, or what’s left of farms in the Ohunka Valley and a few industries extracting what’s remaining in the hills to the south.