Main Idea
l In a colloquial style, the author paints an ironic picture of thelife of a company man and his family.
l The man was a workaholic who died of a heart attack, which surprisedno one. He devoted all his thoughts and energy to work and everything else wassecondary to that and the end might be considered tragically heroic: he workedhimself to death.
Paragraph 1 — The introductory part.
Paragraphs 2-6 — This part reports how devoted theman was to his work.
Paragraphs 7-13 — This part describes Phil’s role inhis family.
Paragraphs 14-16 — This is the end of the essay.After the cause of Phil’s death being restated, the author goes on to reportthe company president’s inquiry for his successor.
Section Three Detailed Reading
The Company Man
Ellen Goodman1
1 He worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
2 Theobituary didn’t say that, of course. Itsaid that he died of a coronary thrombosis— I think that was it — but everyone among his friends and acquaintances knewit instantly. He was a perfect Type A2, a workaholic, a classic,they said to each other and shook their heads — and thought for five or tenminutes about the way they lived.
3 Thisman who worked himself to death finally and precisely at 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning — on his day off — wasfifty-one years old and a vice-president. He was, however, one of sixvice-presidents, and one of three who might conceivably — if the president diedor retired soon enough — have moved to the top spot. Phil knew that.
4 Heworked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night, during atime when his own company had begun the four-day week for everyone but theexecutives. He worked like the Important People3. He had no outside“extracurricular interests,” unless, of course, you think about a monthly golfgame that way. ToPhil, it was work. He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was, ofcourse, overweight,by 20 or 25 pounds. He thought it was okay, though, because he didn’t smoke.
5 OnSaturdays, Phil wore a sports jacket to the office instead of a suit, becauseit was the weekend.
6 Hehad a lot of people working for him, maybe sixty, and most of them liked himmost of the time. Three of them will be seriously considered for his job. Theobituary didn’t mention that.
7 Butit did list his “survivors” quite accurately. He is survived by his wife, Helen, forty-eightyears old, a good woman of no particular marketable skills, who worked in anoffice before marrying and mothering. Shehad, according to her daughter, given up trying to compete with his work yearsago, when the children were small.A company friend said, “I know how much you will miss him.” And she answered,“I already have.”
8 “Missinghim all these years,” she must have given up part of herself which had caredtoo much for the man. She would be “well taken care of.”
9 His“dearly beloved” eldest of the “dearly beloved” children is a hard-workingexecutive in a manufacturing firm down South. In the day and a half before thefuneral, he went around the neighborhood researching his father, asking theneighbors what he was like. They were embarrassed.
10 His second child is a girl, whois 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, theyhad nothing to say to each other.
11 Theyoungest is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate who has spent the last coupleof years, like a lot of his friends, doing enough odd jobs to stay in grass andfood4. He was the one who tried to grab at his father, and tried tomean enough to him to keep the man at home. He was his father’s favorite. Overthe last two years, Phil stayed up nights worrying about the boy.
12 Theboy once said, “My father and I only board here5.”
13 Atthe funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-eight-year-oldwidow that the fifty-one-year-old deceased had meant much to the company andwould be missed and would be hard to replace. The widow didn’t look him in theeye. She was afraid he would read her bitterness and, after all, she would needhim to straighten out the finances — the stock options6 and allthat.
14 Philwas overweight and nervous and worked too hard. If he wasn’t at the office hewas worried about it. Phil was a Type A, a heart-attack natural. You could havepicked him out in a minute from a lineup.
15 Sowhen he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning, no one was reallysurprised.
16 By5:00 p.m. the afternoon of the funeral, the company president had begun,discreetly of course, with care and taste, to make inquiries about hisreplacement. One of three men. He asked around: “Who’s been working thehardest?”
1) What is the general tone of thisarticle? What is the author’s attitude toward Phil?
2) Why does the author frequentlymention the time “3.00 a.m.Sunday morning”?
3) Why does the author mention thecompany president’s inquiries about Phil’s replacement at the end of thearticle?
Class Activity
Group discussion: Why isn’t the name of the deceased mentioned at the very beginning?
Unlike most essays which usually make itclear who the character is at the very beginning, this essay begins with thepronoun “He.”At the end of the third paragraphwhere the name was finally mentioned, readers only get to know the first nameof the deceased, not his full name.
This, on the one hand, is meant to get thereaders involved in finding out who is being discussed, and on the other,suggests the fact that workaholicism has become a common phenomenon. Thedeceased was only one of the many workaholics who bury themselves in their workand forget all about their individuality.
