In the Poem “The Market Economy” by Marge Piercy the author offers us a very bleak outlook on the overt commercialism of our modern society and of the toxic damage caused by modern manufacturing. In each small example the author provides we are at first sold, or offered something by an unseen, unnamed “peddler”. (1) Then we are shown the consequence of accepting the peddler’s wares, both to ourselves and to the natural world around us.
The author is showing us the cost of all of our modern goods, and while the TV set might not reach out and grab your baby’s spine and twist it all up, the toxins created during its manufacture certainly will.(1-4) Just as the manufacturing of polyvinyl cups and polyester suits(5-8) emits dangerous toxins such as vinyl chloride, chlorinated di-benzo dioxins and hydrogen chloride.(EPA) All of which will cost you a lung and might also create cancer in humans. Even the nice new suburban house comes with a cost, you must work at a dangerous factory in order to pay for it, but then you “die at fifty-one when your kidneys turn off.” (19-20) the point the author is trying to make is that we are ultimately paying for all these new items with our lives. They are new, shiny and great, but they leave a wake of environmental devastation behind them. A wake that we all live in and are affected by whether or not we take part in the commerce that created it.
The last verse it the authors attempt at telling us that the world is closing in around us. She asks us “where else will you work?”(21), and when you think about it the only jobs to be had that can pay a good wage are in crowded polluted cities “under the yellow sky”.(25) The next lines are very powerful to me because she brings up the notion of predominance of large scale corporatization and perhaps a bit of corporate monopoly. I get that idea from her lines “You've been out of work