ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

Stephen Duck, the 18th century day laborer and poet gave people outside the laboring class an insider’s look into the world of agricultural workers in his time. His poem “The Thresher’s Labor” primarily focuses on the constant, backbreaking, and repetitive work that is necessary to grow food. Modern employees or “associates” as many corporations choose to call their underlings could learn a few things from Duck. He tells the story of a lowly day laborer, a story that many employees would find eerily and perhaps uncomfortably familiar. Duck’s story mirrors that of many modern day workers that feel trapped in the cycle of their work 5 days a week 9am-5pm. Same thing day in and day out, he sums up this feeling at the end of his poem lines 280-283 “Now growing Labours still succeed the past, and growing always new, must always last”.

Duck’s account of labor differs from most modern positions that there is no hope for promotion or pay raise for him, he works for a wage and that is pretty much all he will ever earn. Thankfully here in the 21st century most jobs have an opportunity to move up or gain more, but when looking at the similarities between working then and working now, is looking forward to raises and promotions employees really just trying to make themselves feel better about their jobs? Even Duck did this by comparing himself to a wide variety of heroic and godly characters from Greek and Roman mythology. Lines 40-41 “Down one, one up, so well they keep the Time, TheCyclops Hammers could not truer chime;”

It would be unfair to say that worker’s conditions haven’t improved in three hundred years, they most definitely have at least in most first world countries. But I think that the mindset is still very similar; many modern day workers feel trapped in their roles in society. Only now instead of working under a hot sun it’s under the buzzing pulse of phosphorescent lights and computer screens. Bodies now ache with carpel tunnel, back and eye strain instead of pulled muscles and sunburn.

If Duck were working for himself instead of an insulting landowner I think his poem would have been very different. Going into business for oneself requires a vision, planning and motivation that is scarcely seen by his laboring class. They work because they have to to survive. The same is true today, one of the best things someone can say about themselves is “I own my own business.”  with the addition “and it’s doing well” is even more valuable. Even though it is essentially the same work, and even more of it being responsible for one’s own livelihood there is a sense of independence and pride that goes along with it.  On his own farm or land Duck would have been doing the same work but he would have been the one assigning value to his own work, which I think would have made him happier.

Duck was born into his working class situation and though modern day Americans are generally encouraged to work hard, get good jobs and move up, many people don’t move anywhere and feel trapped. I think that “The Thresher’s Labor” would be good reading for a lot of employees to get them thinking about what they are spending their lives, time, energy and effort on. Whether it is worth it and how valuable they think their time is.