"Dimly is in the distance, like a ghost hooting, I heard the refinery whistles blowing for the swing shifts. And I could picture the workmen plodding in to their jobs, and the other shifts plodding out. Tossing their lunch buckets into their cars. Driving home and playing with their kids and drinking beer and watching their television sets and diddling their wives and...Just as if nothing was happening. Just as if a kid wasn't dying and a man, part of a man, dying with him."
The narrator is describing a group of hard-working men who go to their jobs everyday, working long hours and struggling. He makes note that they act as if it does not matter whether they work bad jobs. However, they are slowly dying inside from generation to generation of lower class working men and they don't realize it. They just go from day to day, doing the same thing over and over again.
This painting shows peasants who are clearly struggling with their lives. They work very hard and have little to no money. When looking at this picture, I am reminded of the quote from the novel about slowly dying inside. These peasants will never have the lives they wish to have. They will continue to work the same job, and live the same way every day forever.
Jim Thompson. The Killer Inside Me. Vintage Books. 1991. 119.
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