79 pages • 2 hours read
Lynn NottageA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Stan’s reflection about the current generation of leadership—and its extreme distancing from the human concerns of workers—becomes a thematic touchstone for Sweat: “And the problem is they don’t wanna get their feet dirty, their diplomas soiled with sweat…or understand the real cost, the human cost of making their shitty product” (26). The play alludes to the ways in which not only factory management, but politicians in Washington, remain willfully removed from working class Americans’ concerns. The removal of Olstead’s management is so extreme that Cynthia observes—upon receiving her promotion—“Twenty-four years, and I can’t remember talking to anyone in the office, except to do paperwork. I mean some of these folks have been working here as long as us, but they’re as unfamiliar as a stranger sitting next to you on the bus” (54). Management’s physical, intellectual, and emotional removal from workers on the factory floor allows them to ultimately outsource their jobs to Mexico (because they have so little connection to the labor that goes into these jobs, or to the human beings working them).
By Lynn Nottage