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The speaker discusses the impact of the book Catch-22, describing how the illogical actions of the characters eventually start to make sense. They highlight a scene where a character discusses their disbelief in God, but also their belief in a kind and benevolent God. The speaker mentions the complexity and meaninglessness of the work described in a poem by Bob Hickok, and how it reflects the job market and attitudes towards work at the time. They analyze the structure, point of view, imagery, symbolism, and tone of the poem. The speaker also explores the shift in the story when the narrator's brother comes home from college. They discuss the title of the poem and its connection to the futility of work and the importance of money. Overall, the speaker suggests that the world values the concept of work more than the actual work itself. One of my favorite books of all time, along with the Zaragoza series, is Catch-22. It was a grueling journey to read that book, I didn't even enjoy reading it all that much, but after I read it, and slept to think about it, it changed me, as a person. The logics that the characters use make no sense at all, all of them are insane, nothing makes any sense when you first read it. Most of the things aren't meant to be understood at all, but some of them, after you think about them long enough, start to make just a little sense. In one of the scenes, Ysarian is talking to a girl about God. None of them believe in God, but when Ysarian starts to defame and insult God for making humans feel pain, and being responsible for all of the bad things in life, like disease and war, the girl stops him, sobbing, I don't believe in God, but the God I don't believe in is a kind and benevolent one. And it shouldn't make sense, but after thinking about it for a while, it totally makes sense. But I can explain the logic to you, it's really a book that you just have to read to understand. It has a movie, which I haven't watched in a month, so it's good. In any case, my favorite part about Catch-22 is that it makes you look at logic a different way. I could sit here all day and point out my favorite parts of the book, but I have to talk about this poem, so... I apologize to the teacher and one random student who has to listen to this, because the few points I might get from reading any of the script expressively is simply not worth the effort it might take to express any emotion after writing poetry podcasts. After working 60 hours again, for what reason? By Bob Hickok. The best job I had was moving a stone from one side of the road to the other. This required a permit, which required a bribe. The bribe took all of my salary, yet because I hadn't finished the job, I had no salary, and to pay the bribe, I took a job moving the stone the other way. Because the official wanted his bribe, he gave me the permit for the second job. When I pointed out that the work would be best completed if I did nothing, he complimented my brain and wrote a letter to my employer suggesting promotion on stationery bearing the wings of a raptor spread in flight over a mound smaller than the bird. My boss, fearing my intelligence, paid me to sleep on the sofa and take lunch with the official, who required a bribe to keep anything from being done. When I told my parents, they wrote my bird to come home from university and to be slapped on the back of the head. Dutifully, he arrived and bowed to receive his instruction, at which point sense entered his body and he asked what I could do by way of a job. I pointed out there were stones everywhere trying not to move. All it took was a little gumption to be the man who didn't move them. It was hard to explain the intricacies of attaining a permit to not do this. Just yesterday, he got up at dawn and shaved, as if the lack of hair on his face has anything to do with the appearance of food on an empty table. My first reaction was, what? The problem is confusing, but not in a super demetaphorical way. It's in a way that doesn't make sense. Everything that happens is convoluted and has no meaning. They're telling me that moving a stone from one side to the other requires a permit. To acquire the permit to move the stone, the narrator has to bribe the official to get the permit. The bribe takes off the narrator's salary, but the narrator doesn't have the salary yet, so they get the salary to pay the bribe to get the permit to move the stone to get the salary to pay the bribe. The narrator moves the stone the other way. This also requires a permit, but because the official wants the bribe for the first job, he gives the permit to the narrator to move the stone the other way, so that the narrator can get the salary to pay the bribe to get the permit for the first job, which would be moving the stone back to its original position. Why? The poem is mostly about how unnecessarily complicated and meaningless the work that some people have to do to stay alive is. The work that the narrator does contributes nothing to anyone or anything. He's just moving a rock. He gets paid to move that rock, or he would get paid to do the job. He didn't have to bribe an official to get a permit to do it. Bob Hickok is a very accomplished poet, publishing many poetry books and even receiving a MFA, Master of Fine Arts degree, from Vermont College of Fine Arts after publishing his fourth book, despite having no graduate or undergraduate degree previously. Bob Hickok was born in 1960, so that might affect the type of jobs people would be working at the time. The poem was written in 2004, so during this time, he would have been teaching creative writing at Virginia Tech. This time period gives us some insight into how the job market might have looked and how people during that time felt about the jobs they worked. The poem uses four sentences and lots of end notes to make the tone and the way it's read very punched and direct. There's a run-on sentence when the official is describing the narrator's intelligence, but that's it. The individual lines are short and rarely longer than eight words, and many of the words are short, which makes the poem seem very small horizontally. The structure is never broken in the poem. It never indents when it doesn't need to or have a line go on for longer than it should, which may represent how orderly everything has to be in the modern world. Point of view. The poem is written in first person. This tells the story because it can be imagined that this poem, Before the Brother Comes Home, is a story being told to the brother after he comes home. The perspective also enhances the story through making the event seem more closely related to the narrative and helps the reader understand how normal everything that happens in the poem is to everyone in the poem, with the story being explained casually to a brother who's just returned home. Imagery. When the official sends a letter complimenting the narrator's brain, he sends the compliment using the phrase, This is no doubt a weird thing to put in a formal letter to an employer and probably represents an awfully complicated lingo that everything related to business is put through. The official can't just say that the narrator's smart, he has to say it formally, which, in this world, is saying that the narrator is a raptor that's flying over a mountain. He uses the preconceived notions of what is formal to conceive this and make a statement on how unnecessary the wording is in business. Symbolism. Living is done from one side of the road to the other, symbolic of the work that many people are forced to complete to be able to live and how needlessly complicated being able to do that work is. The official represents the corruption and laziness of a very tired level of work. The official not only takes bribes but requires you to pay a bribe to get a permit to work for him. The narrator's employer knows about the official's bribes and also does nothing about it, like the official requiring bribes isn't a bad thing. The official is never treated as corrupt despite taking bribes, which is symbolic of how business owners and rich people can get away with exploiting workers and get away with it. The tone is very direct. Despite all of this nonsense, the narrator never acts like anything is out of the ordinary. Getting the job moving a stone that requires a permit that requires a bribe is not only not weird, but one of the best jobs the narrator has had. The narrator also tells the brother about the stones and how they are loved and trying not to move. The story uses its directness in combination with the confusing subject matter to create a world where nothing makes sense to the reader, but makes sense and seems almost mundane to everyone inside the world. A major shift happens in the story when the narrator goes home to tell his parents about his job and they call the brother home. The brother is going to college, the complete opposite of what the narrator is doing, and gets slapped on the back of the head for it. It shifts from the pointless job that the narrator is doing to what the brother is doing, getting an education. When the brother asks about what jobs there are, he gets told about the stones. Moving stones is a job that requires no education at all, and it's one of the best jobs out there. The story moves from nonsense to talking about why the brother was stupid for not participating in the nonsense. Not necessarily because becoming a smarter, better person is bad, but because you don't need to be smart to do menial tasks. If moving a stone doesn't require an education, why get an education? The title seems to be referring to the futility of the work that the narrator does. Moving a stone from one side of the road to the other helps no one and does nothing but take time to do, and require a permit. The title also seems to be talking about how much time the narrator spends doing this pointless work to be able to put food on the table. The poem discusses work and why we do it, to get paid. This poem talks about the reason that humans work at all, and how it doesn't have to be to accomplish something anymore. The world we've built needs money. Going to college or shaving, improving yourself in a way, doesn't do anything. If those actions don't make money, and you need money to, say, buy food, then why do them? They won't help you save. Work will. The world in this poem is one where the idea of work is more valuable than the work itself. It doesn't matter what the work being done is, so long as it is. It reflects a lot of things that we do in real life. Most teenagers would consider school meaningless, and they don't even get paid for it. And most adults can't do what they want to, because they have to do work that doesn't mean anything to them, and probably to anyone else. But even if the work doesn't have any meaning, there have to be jobs because people have to work. People have to make money, even if there isn't any work that's worthy of being done or worthy of being paid to do. So meaningless jobs are going to be offered, and you would be stupid not to take them. Through all of this nonsense, one thing sticks out, that the brother is not only asked to come home, but he's been being in college before, having sense enter his body, and asking about jobs. Or he's told about the stones. One other thing seems to be implying that the brother was an idiot to go to college when there are stones everywhere that could be moved for money. Despite moving the stones being a completely worthy endeavor, the fact that the brother isn't doing it makes the brother an idiot. So Hickok seems to be implying that going to college to contribute to something is stupid when you could be moving stones for money. How is it more worth your time to learn to make money when learning isn't going to help you make money, and you need money to live? The poem focuses solely on food and money, which is something that many people get caught up with in their lives. The poem never once talks about the happiness that a job that you want to do could bring. Never once talked about how a college could help you get a job that brings you happiness, simply because in this world, none of the worlds possibly could bring happiness because none of them have any meaning. After working 60 hours again, for what reason? By Bob Hickok. The best job I had was moving a stone from one side of the road to the other. This required a pen, which required a bribe. The bribe took all of my salary, yet because I hadn't finished the job, I had no salary, and to pay the bribe, I took a job moving the stone the other way. Since the official wanted his bribe, he gave me a payment for the second job. When I pointed out that the work would be best completed if I did nothing, he complimented my brain and wrote a letter to my employer suggesting promotion on stationary bending the wings of a raft to spread in flight over a mountain smaller than the bed. My boss, fearing my intelligence, paid me to sleep on the sofa and take lunch with the official who required a bribe to keep anything from being done. When I told my parents, they wrote my brother to come home from university to be slapped on the back of the head. Dutifully, he arrived and vowed to receive his instruction, at which point, since I'd entered his body, he asked what I could do by way of a job. I pointed out there were stones everywhere trying not to move. All it took was a little gumption to be the man who didn't move them. It's hard to explain the intricacies of obtaining a permit to not do this. Just yesterday, he got up at dawn and shaved, as if the lack of hair on his face has anything to do with the appearance of food on an empty table.