Ellen Goodman
“The
Company Man”
Ellen Goodman (b. 1942) was educated at Radcliffe College
and pursued a career as a journalist. She was a researcher and reporter for Newsweek, a feature writer for the Boston Globe, and a syndicated
columnist with Washington Post Writers Group. She has been a Nieman Fellow at
Harvard University and named columnist of the year by the New England Women's
Press Association. In 1980 she won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished
commentary. Her books include Turning
Points (1979) and At Large
(1981), a collection of newspaper columns. In this essay she portrays a
workaholic whose sense of self is totally based upon his identification with
his company.
He worked himself to death, finally
and precisely, at 3:00 a.m. Sunday
morning.
The obituary didn't say that, of
course. It said that he died of a coronary thrombosis—I think that was it—but
everyone among his friends and acquaintances knew it instantly. He was a perfect
Type A, a workaholic, a classic, they said to each other and shook their
head—and thought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived.
This man who worked himself to death
finally and precisely at 3:00 a.m.
Sunday morning—on his day off—was fifty-one years old and a vice-president. He
was, however, one of six vice-presidents, and one of three who might
conceivably—if the president died or retired soon enough—have moved to the top
spot. Phil knew that.
He worked six days a week, five of
them until eight or nine at night, during a time when his own company had begun
the four-day week for everyone but the executives. He worked like the Important
People. He had no outside "extracurricular interests," unless, of
course, you think about a monthly golf game that way. To Phil, it was work. He
always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was, of course, overweight, by
20 to 25 pounds. He thought it was okay, though, because he didn't smoke.
On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports
jacket to the office instead of a suit, because it was the weekend.
He had a lot of people working for
him, maybe sixty, and most of them liked him most of the time. Three of them
will be seriously considered for his job. The obituary didn't mention that.
But it did list his
"survivors" quite accurately. He is survived by his wife, Helen,
forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular marketable skills, who
worked in an office before marrying and mothering. She had, according to her
daughter, given up trying to compete with his work years ago, when the children
were small. A company friend said, "I know how much you will miss
him." And she answered, "I already have."
"Missing him all these
years," she must have given up part of herself which had cared too much
for the man. She would be "well taken care of."
His "dearly beloved"
eldest of the "dearly beloved" children is a hard-working executive
in a manufacturing firm down South. In the day and a half before the funeral,
he went around the neighborhood researching his father, asking the neighbors
what he was like. The were embarrassed.
His second child is a girl, who is
twenty-four and newly married. She lives near her mother and they are close,
but whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving somewhere, they
had nothing to say to each other.
The youngest is twenty, a boy, a
high-school graduate who has spent the last couple of years, like a lot of his
friends, doing enough odd jobs to stay in grass and food. He was the one who
tried to grab at his father, and tried to mean enough to him to keep the man at
home. He was his father's favorite. Over the last two years, Phil stayed up
nights worrying about the boy.
The boy once said, "My father
and I only board here."
At the funeral, the sixty-year-old
company president told the forty-eight-year-old widow that the
fifty-one-year-old deceased had meant much to the company and would be missed
and would be hard to replace. The widow didn't look him in the eye. She was
afraid he would read her bitterness and, after all, she would need him to
straighten out the finances—the stock options and all that.
Phil was overweight and nervous and
worked too hard. If he wasn't at the office, he was worried about it. Phil was
a Type A, a heart-attack natural. You could have picked him out in a minute
from a lineup.
So when he finally worked himself to
death, at precisely 3:00 a.m.
Sunday morning, no one was really surprised.
By 5:00 p.m. the of the funeral, the company president had begun,
discreetly of course, with care and taste, to make inquiries about his
replacement. One of three men. He asked around: "Who's been working the
hardest?"
Suggestions for Discussion
1. What does the
clause "and thought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived"
tell the reader about the author's point of view? about her tone?
2. What is the
significance of the statement that the man who died was one of six vice-presidents
and one of three who might . . . have moved to the top spot?
3. Why doesn't the
author identify the man by name until the end of the third paragraph?
4. Goodman makes
statements about Phil, then qualifies them. Cite instances. What is the nature
of the qualification? How does this technique add to the characterization? to
the tone?
5. What does the
brief item on each family member and the company president tell readers about
Phil? about themselves?
6. Account for the
repetition of Phil's age and the hour of his death.
7. What is the
significance of the president's question after the funeral?
8. What is the
implicit statement that Goodman makes about workaholics? about large companies?
9. Speculate on Phil's
sense of self.
Suggestions for Writing
1. Make a study of a
person you know whose sense of self is based on his or her identification with
an institution, a business, a school, or a character in fiction.
2. If you know a
workaholic, write a description using incidents and dialogue that illuminate
his or her character.
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