Saturday, June 21, 2014

Paul’s constant question in “Job” is “how much am I worth?”: what happens when he has a minor nervous breakdown?

At the end of "Christ in Concrete," Paul has a minor breakdown and begins to lose his faith as he watches the people around him struggle through the depression, witnesses his godfather falling to his death at a construction site, and fails to receive a sign from God following the accident. He begins questioning the apparent absence of God relative to the inevitability of "Job" (or the necessity of labor) in his life and the lives of other immigrants. Work becomes Paul's primary dedication, rather than religion: work is a constant necessity, and religion failed to help him both emotionally and materially. His suffering and the suffering of his fellow laborers and the trauma of watching his godfather's death due to work were unresolved by religion, so Paul abandons it entirely, and the central institution in his life instead becomes the inevitability of work-- or "Job."

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