Environments in David Lodge's “Nice Work”

The writer begins the description of the environments from the very first subpart of the first part, focusing the reader attention on the features that define the two main characters, Vic Wilcox and Robyn Penrose; but only in the third subpart the two different worlds are compared.

In fact, in this section of the book, Lodge tells the reader the two characters ' daily lives in their work environment, alternating paragraphs where Robyn teaches English literature at the University of Rummidge, with paragraphs where Vic moves inside the J. Pringle and Sons and compares with his colleagues about economic issues.

So there are some significant differences between the industrial and the university environment.

The omniscient narrator in third person uses both the telling and the showing narrative technique, in order to present to the reader environments and characters.

INDUSTRY

• The industrial environment is characterized by a capitalist ideology, therefore is based on the production of competitive products in order to make profits.

• The relationship between the upper and the employee is vertical and pointed out by the importance of the fact that Everthorpe should not be late at work.

• Even the settings become symbols: the difference between those who live in the city, and are therefore in a more comfortable economic situation, and those who live in the countryside that is also a symbol of illiteracy and poverty.

• Even Vic, like Brian, is subject to human instincts, but he is less naive (in fact at the end of the book he will be conducted by Robyn to change his mind about the semiotic theories).

• In the factory world everything moves like a machine, even the workers do. Everything has a sole aim and everything is produced with the only purpose of earning and allow the factory to use the profits to buy new machines that will then replace the manual labor of the workers and this will entail additional profits that will allow new gains and investments. The whole thing is a vicious circle of which Vic is the unfortunate unconscious victim, who thinks to govern the system and does not realize that he is himself part of it.

• David Lodge further parodies industrial society entering in the book Vic's dismissal and he initially, had planned to make staff cuts.

UNIVERSITY

• Inside the university milieu circulate ideas, abstract thoughts, which put first the man as man, and not the man as part of a production system.

• From the very first paragraph dedicated to this environment, we can breathe the air of freedom of thought and movement: the students make their way to the classrooms whirling fluid in the corridors and creating a great fusion that is an integral part of the university and fully respects Robyn's ideology.

• In contrast with Vic, Robyn is not annoyed by the latecomers students (ndr).

• During her lessons, Robyn describes exactly Vic's lifestyle, marked by the gain, but that in addition to his work environment does not contemplate anything else: Robyn describes it as a world of desolation.