In my piece Adam asks lots of rhetorical questions such as “will I be able to pay the rent?”, to create the effect of Adam asking himself these questions, thinking and worrying and also to get the reader involved and thinking about these questions and asking themselves what would I do in this situation. I used repetition in Adam asking himself these same questions which can compare to ‘Animal Farm’ where Napoleon often gets the group singing the chant “Beasts of England” when in times of trouble.
‘Animal Farm’ is narrated in the third person with lots of dialogue, my piece was written in the first person, another key difference is that my piece is based around one character and only touches on other characters such as Mr Adams, Mr Gill and Ann. ‘Animal Farm’ is in contrast to this as lots of characters are used in the story, I made this decision as I found ‘Animal Farm’ slightly confusing with the vast amount of characters the piece has, so I thought my piece would be easier to read and understand with a first person view, so the reader can almost interact with the character.
I chose to set my piece in the work place during the recession in the UK “ever since the start of the credit crunch” Adam compares work life before and then during the credit crunch and identifies key changes in his role at work. Both my piece and George Orwell’s piece use formal language in narration, but tend to drift into informal in the dialogue “what do you take me for pal”, I used this informal language to step out of the formal writing to keep interest in the piece, by creating onomatopoeia for example in the word “Argh!” in the opening sentence.
My piece was written to get the reader’s attention, and for them to be answering the questions as they read and to be thinking and comparing this workplace, to the workplace of their own, and even in a way feeling sympathetic towards the main character, as many of his issues in the story are shared by so many people in society today. This seemed to work to good effect by using rhetorical questions and specific dialogue to attract the audience’s attention. Animal Farm gets people relating the animals to how the Russian revolution happened and thinking about historical scenarios, however I don’t believe Orwell wrote his piece to create this effect. Orwell uses animals to make the story more interesting and put a slight twist on the Russian revolution rather than copying it.
Alliteration is used in both pieces creating a good knock-on effect for the next scene. In ‘work worries’, the quote “spiteful sanctions”, by creating sibilance using the alliteration via an ‘s’ sound it creates anger and growing frustration through the main character. Alliteration occurs once again in the title of my story ‘Work Worries’, I chose this title as alliteration can draw readers in, and it creates an effect of interest or admiration. There is a lot of tension in ‘work worries’ with a build up structure as he is getting himself worked up and then at the end he asks himself the question about what to do, tension is also created when he describes some of his and his boss’ battles. Likewise a lot of tension is built up in ‘animal farm’ with the battles which continuously go on throughout the story. When Adam asks himself “what about the wife and kids?” this is the first indication that he has children and it makes the situation worse for him in one line, by saying this he means if he loses his job the wife and kids will probably end up on the streets which is not a pleasant thing for the reader to read. This part of the piece is interesting however as it is the start of all the questions to himself about his possible future and from this point the audience is likely to be attracted to the piece and answering this questions and using their imagination to picture what would happen.
‘Work Worries’ both compares and contrasts to ‘Animal Farm’ in different ways I believe both pieces were successful in what they set out to achieve, i.e. work worries getting audience involved and i.e. animal farm getting the state of communism out into the open.
