“The Sandwich Factory” is a short story written by Jason Kennedy and released in 2007. The story deals with a man who works at a sandwich factory. He is low-paid and is slowly getting tired of many things at the factory; the workers, the manager and especially the conveyor belt. We get an insight in his thoughts about not only the factory, but also his real life. The short story takes place in a sandwich factory in 1994. It seems like the typical factory, with a conveyor belt surrounded by a lot of workers, who seems to be working automatically, just like machines. At the same time, the workers are being controlled by spiteful executives. The managers are not treating the workers right though, and is rating and marking the workers, ranging from “poor” to “excellent”. Even the rating is not done properly by the managers: “Someone always has to be rated excellent; he always chooses whoever had the best legs“ (s. 2, l. 23-24). It’s very downgrading towards the workers and it is one of the things that the main character is annoyed with. It is the same thing every day, over and over again and the factory is similar to a giant mechanism operating non-stop. This is another thing that is aggravating our main character: “[…] where similarly bored and unhappy workers attended daily … “ (p. 3, l. 51-52). He seems very discontented about his job and is noticing everything that he thinks is wrong with the factory. Even the smallest things are annoying him. The hairnets, the cold tomato-slices, the other staff members. He even starts daydreaming about being rich and hiring a bunch of old, fat managers, who would push giant rocks up a homemade hill, while he would sit in a director’s chair and watch them. The daydreams are a clear signal, which shows that the job is not only affecting the main character physically, but also psychotically. It is interrupting his mind in his every-day, which indicates that the annoyance really is a problem for him. The short story is written as a 1st person narrator, where we mainly follow the main characters thoughts in the factory, and not so much about his real life. What we do get to hear about his personal life, is that he drives a white Mini Cooper, which is not a cheap car. He does not have a girlfriend and does not seem interested in any of the girls at work; in fact he seems to abhor one of the ladies and her attire. He even admits that he has “[..] zero confidence with women anyway” (p. 4, l.96). We do not read about him even attending any guys either and in general, he seems to be a very introverted person.
One thing that is quite funny about him is that he is very in to the English punk rock band, Joy Division. There is now three things that opposes each other. His very boring, low paid factory job, his classy white Mini Cooper and his love for the dirty, gritty, English punk rock band, Joy Division. The reason for his taste in music is that he can let himself loose to it and get all of his anger from work out, just by listening to this music, consisting of fast drums, loud guitar, yelling vocals and a pumping bass. It gets his pulse moving, which is does not at work or in his spare time. The main reason the main character dislikes this factory so much, is that everyday seems like one another. This is also what is explained in the novel “Hard Times”, by Charles Dickens. In this city, “Coketown”, all the streets looks like one another, all of the city is made of the same red bricks, which has been covered smoke and ashes and the inhabitants all walk in and out at the same hours, with the same sounds, at the same pavements, do the same work and all the days are the same as yesterday and tomorrow. I could not explain how much the main character from The Sandwich Factory would hate Coketown. He hates how every working-day seems impossible to tell apart and this is precisely what Coketown is about. Everything is the same, no matter when you see it. It’s the same people, the same houses, the same pavements; everything is running mechanically, just like the sandwich factory is. The still image from the Chaplin Movie, Modern Times, shows exactly what the sandwich factory is to our main character. It works mechanically, by the help of workers. We see a worker with an exaggerated smile, working on a cogwheel. The smile looks very false and the worker only smiles to look happy, even though he is not, which is what is happening at the sandwich factory too. From the outside, everything seems fine; the workers are happy, the sandwiches are good etc. But the workers are not happy at all, even though it may look so and the sandwiches are not good, which the main character also tells at one point: “And these problems manifested as poorly made sandwiches. Sandwiches with no lid, sandwiches without tomato. Ham and tomato sandwiches with no lid, no ham, and no tomato (in extreme cases)” (p. 3, l. 76-78). That is how the modern times, hence the title of the picture, works at times; everything looks great on the surface but everything is not always that great beneath it. * B)
In Charles Dickens novel, Coketown, Charles uses a lot of metaphors to explain the city in a more vivid way. He explains the city as being “ […] red and black like the painted face of a savage” (p. 6, l. 2-3). When using such a strong metaphor, the reader will immediately create an imaginary picture of this savage. This is also what happens when Dickens explains how “ […] serpents of smoke” (p. 6, l. 4) came out of the tall chimneys, which again makes the readers create an image in their minds. By making the explaining of this industrial city so metaphorical, it is easier for the reader to really understand the true nature of the town, which would normally be quite hard for a regular person to understand, since most people do not experience this kind of town in their everyday life. Furthermore, the fact that the text gets more interesting to read when filled with these similes could also attract more readers.