Slow Down Mr.Barrio

Raymond Barrio is a master of phrasing and allusion. He uses this to suggest that the meaning in life comes from having dignity in what you do. You have to live for your own dignity in order to be a real person. Sometimes, it may take doing something that isn’t normally nice, but in the end if it brings good into the world it is worth it. The first paragraph is phrases very interestingly. It using very choppy and robotic sentences. Sometimes there are even one word sentences. Barrio is using this to mirror the workers he is describing. They are working not as people, but autonomous robots like the workers. He may be suggesting that the reader may also be turning into a robot by making them talk like one. The phrasing is meant to suggest the nature of the worker, in their robotic state, braking the flow of the paragraph with one word sentences.The one word sentences show a progression that the workers are going through. The workers all started off entering their jobs to provide for their families. They become “trapped” (1) in doing this work because they need to keep their families going. They lose a sense of what makes them human and living only to survive another day like an “animal”(1). They begin to get physically stronger, but lose their thinking from lack of use, and become a “brute”(1). They keep getting more brute like until they have no needs other than the core human needs and become a “beast”(1) form of what they once were. They become “savage”(1) and lose every trace of humanity until they “wreck”(1). They keeping living as a wreck until they become a “predator”(1) because that is the only life they’ve known. They were always treated a certain way so they pass on. The one word sentences suggest the growth of an animal doing the work, not a man.The next paragraph moves up to two word sentences as the new minimum, but only with “the”(1)’s or “a”(1)’s . This is also used to mirror the workers, but this time Emmanuel more specify. The sentence structure grew and evolved just as Emmanuel as a character does. He is begins his first act of rebellion, even if it was an accident, when he “blacked out”(1). These two simple word sentences mirrors Emmanuel’s growth into a person. The second paragraph also suggests that the work Emmanuel and the other pickers are doing is seemingly point less and “endless”(1). Sisyphus was a man who endlessly pushed a rock up a mountain. Emmanuel also had endless work that grow into a “mountain”(1). Barrio may be suggesting that the lack of dignity in Emmanuel’s work leads him to do an “endless”(1) unimportant job.Again there is a build up of phrases in the third paragraph. There are still two word sentences, but the simple words are replaced with more descriptive language. The language also moves to a higher level using words like “zenith”(1). The maturity behind the writing grew as each paragraphed shifted. One of the following lines mentions a convenient character name, and lead to another convenience in names. The antagonist Robert Morales is finally mentioned by name. His name suggest that he is moral less, by only repeating the last letter. This may lead one to look at Emanuel’s name. He has been demoralized to be only used as manual labor, which sounds like Emanuel. These facts may lead one to think that Barrio is trying to tell us that “men are built to experience a certain sense of honor and pride”(2), which Barrio literally says at the end of this passage. The aforementioned devices further this point the Barrio was trying to tell us. For a person to be a person they must have pride and dignity