Orientation Daniel Orozco Analysis

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Setting is a vital part of every great story. Without it, the reader is confused and often becomes uninterested. With setting, a reader can often find character, tone, style, and even a plot from a simple room. Some stories, like Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation,” thrive off the setting and are dependent on the setting. Told in second person, the story is an unknown co-worker telling a new employee about all the intricacies of the office. From the great health insurance plan to where everyone in the office sits, Orozco uses an office setting to create a humorous story of an outlandish work environment. The reader never learns who the narrator is or whom the narrator is talking to. In fact, while they are the viewpoints of the stories, they are …show more content…
Many offices have a person who has a crush on a co-worker, like ”Amanda Pierce, who tolerates Russell Nash, [and] is in love with Albert Bosch, whose office is over there,” and the person who steals food from the office refrigerator, like “Barry Hacker, who sits over there, [and] steals food from this refrigerator.” Orozco uses these stereotypes to not only help establish the office setting, but he twists these stereotypes and makes them his own. These stereotypes are believable as the tropes and archetypes of working in an office have been used time and time again in almost every form of media. Orozco twists these ideas and turns them into often darkly humorous bits of information. Whether Orozco is explaining the extensive healthcare, the employees have or a woman who will tell you how you will die, “Orientation” could have been just a boring story about a new employee at work, but instead becomes a dark and funny riff on orientations. The setting helps the story culminate into this weird and wacky place where almost anything can happen, making the serial killer at the end of the story who no one is afraid of seem almost