Working in the Shadows Ch 4

Justin Falcone October 19,2012 Homework # 5 Chapter # 4 Journal In reading chapter 4 in working in the shadows we have seen that Gabriele is on his last week of training. Gabriele is giving the job to cut the four rows of lettuce that are in the path of the machine where the lettuce is stored in the boxes. Gabriele is realizing that 4 rows is a lot and his has to get them done. In this chapter you as the reader really realize all the courage, ambition and strength that Gabriel has. Gabriele has started cutting the lettuce the first day Gabriele couldn’t cut 25 heads before having to stand straight up and relax and stretch his back.

Gabriele stayed strong and kept up with his cutting and as the days went up Gabriele has cut thousands of lettuce and was on his way to finish up his rows. In this chapter it tells us that Gabriele starts working with the rest of the group and tells us all the struggles that Gabriel is going threw. Between the aches and pains and the soreness, Gabriel needs to stay strong, it really allows us as the reader to wonder how hard these immigrants are working. As Gabriele goes on with his workdays no matter how hard he is working he is getting yelled out to work harder even though he believes that he is keeping up with the rest of the workers.

Something that caught my eye that I feel this chapter was manly about was the immigrant worker towards the American workers in the United States. On a Sunday morning Gabriel went to visit Mateo, and the comments Mateo where making for me as an American worker in the United States take it personal. Basically trying to say that Mexican and immigrant workers work much harder where they work in there country, and that us Americans only sit in offices and work on computers all day.

Something that was left out in this chapter could have answered these comments for me and for Mateo that we as Americans work harder then these immigrants think we do. Gabriele could have given stories or even experiences he had with working to back up us Americans. At least explain that the reason why immigrants get into the United States and take the labor jobs from many American workers is because immigrants allow the low pay and the extra hours of work, because it isn’t anything new for them.

As seen in lettuce picking with the extra hours and the low pay, these immigrants don’t have a choice they need to take these jobs. Towards the end of the chapter Gabriele is explaining how hard this job is for him, one of the hardest and Gabriel has taking 2 days off to relax his body. This job I making Gabriele dream about it that how much he thinks about it and worries about going to work every day. After all in my eyes Gabriel realizes that this job is putting a number to him, but he will not quite, he will work threw pain and suffer no matter what.