Imagine yourself in a typical office, in any city, at any sedentary job, and you will find yourself at the nexus of the action in Joshua Ferris's first novel, "Then We Came To The End."
Both "Office Space" and "The Office" are obvious doppelgangers of this novel's premise, and "Then We Came To The End" engages in similar humorous channels.
However, translating the social and spatial dynamics of the office into literature is a difficult move. The audience's visual relation to the cubicle and the artificial lights, as well as the strange habits people develop in this environment, are easily read from the screen. One feels as stifled by the surroundings as the characters do, and the viewer is engaged by a familiarity with the setting and a curiosity as to what will unfold in this highly bizarre, though unquestionably average, mode of employment.
By structuring the events of the novel almost entirely within the confines of the office, Ferris effectively communicates the small space in which the lives of his characters intersect. Even when they are speaking about the trials and tribulations of their lives outside the office, their complaints are framed by the presence of cubicles and a 12th-story view of the world outside the window.
A mechanism that works to give the reader a similar view of the office as one might receive from a television screen is Ferris's use of the first person plural for more than two thirds of the narrative. People who are working in cubicles are operating in a sphere rather distant from majesty, and the royal "we" is hard to adjust to or understand, until one considers it as a way of divorcing the reader from a single narrative perspective. Because the narrator does not have an identity, it becomes more difficult to align oneself to a particular character's plight, which allows for a panoramic view of the interactions taking place. The result of this inability to pin down the protagonist allows for a more or less objective view of the various sad sacks, bosses and gossips that are all on the brink of losing their jobs. Empathy and disgust are spread around fairly evenly for the people Ferris presents.
Ferris's ability to create an unbiased narrative voice is impressive, but the section of the book where he breaks from the "we" and focuses on a single character, Lynn, is the most satisfying. If an inside look into Lynn's life were not provided, it would be difficult to care about the ups and downs of the water cooler.
"Then We Came To The End" illustrates how scraps of the characters' exterior lives sneak past security and into the building. Romance runs an undercurrent, alliances are formed, scapegoats are chosen, and the temporality of employment is a constant source of stress. Ferris takes the reader on a tour of a world that is on the brink of collapse, challenges standards of success, and illustrates how easily roles can change from one office to another.
Ultimately, Ferris does not condemn office work, but he does engage in a continuing dialogue about what it means to participate in this type of corporate employment that, for the majority of Americans, has become the norm.