Governing Right

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Governing Right
Governing Right
How an Author Can Use Work

How an Author Can Use Work

Developing themes and characters by describing jobs

Andy Smarick's avatar
Andy Smarick
Sep 05, 2024
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Governing Right
Governing Right
How an Author Can Use Work
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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.

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