Orientation short essay response

Orientation Short Essay Response

The short story, the Orientation, makes many arguments. All of them are implicit none of them just come out and tell you what the author is trying to argue. It seems as if Daniel Orozco sums up every type of person in America in this office building. You have everyone from the serial killer to the overly nice person to the possessed person. After reading the story it makes it hard to believe that he is just talking about and office building and its employees. I don’t think that a company would hire a serial killer or a possessed person. It makes you think that he is trying to relate this office building to something else, say the United States of America.
He makes it seem that everyone has a dark side to them or something that you don’t know about like a hidden secret. For example, “Kevin Howard…He is a serial killer, the one they call the carpet cutter, responsible for the mutilations across town”. Not only is that a big secret that he is a serial killer, but if he had been a serial killer he wouldn’t be in an office working. He would be in jail. This implies that Kevin doesn’t really work there and that he is a metaphor for other people in the world. As well as Gwendolyn Stich, how on the outside it is said, “…she will always give you a hand, or the shirt off her back, or a shoulder to cry on.” But then telling about how she has been found crying in the stairway or vomiting in the bathrooms. This is saying that nobody is that perfect and that everyone must have some kind of flaw.
As I was reading this I was at first confused about what was going on in the story. Things started to catch my attention such as why a serial killer was working in an office building and why they would hire a possessed woman. Things like how there are so many “love triangles” in this office building. Then I realized that everything meant something else. Whenever I realized that everything started to make sense. I didn’t think of it as there were love affairs going on in the office building but rather that there were love affairs happening all over America. So instead of trying to make sense of everything in its given setting I tried to thing about how it affected everyone.