Analytic Blog

For this Analytic Blog post I choose this image to do a narrative analysis on. When we first look at the image the first thing we notice is a black male sweeping the floor of a train station. When we look around we see white men and women in suits and ties which indicates that they are most likely on their way to work. This image was taken in London in 2000 so we know the time frame of when this image took place. The title of this image says, “The difference in life expectancy between social class I (professionals) and social class V (unskilled manual workers) is 9.5 years for men and 6.4 years for women (Hattersley, 1999).” The upper class is concerned with abstract thought and formal reasoning such as art, literature, and intellectual leisure activities while the lower class focuses on the concrete, necessities of life. When I first saw this image, I thought that it was during segregation era but with further context we know that the image was taken less than 20 years ago. When we see this image, we assume that this is his full-time job and that he is not going to get on the train with the rest of the men and women in suits. We can see a class difference just based on the way that the janitor and the working men and women are dressed. The men who are going to work are in nice dry-cleaned suits while the janitor is wearing a vest with gloves and is not wearing dress shoes. The figurative meaning of this image could be that the men and women don’t even realize that there is a man there cleaning up their mess because they are going about their everyday lives without acknowledging he even exists, but without him it would be a total mess. Whereas the narrative meaning comes from the standpoint of the janitor and that he is cleaning up the mess that these working men and women left behind for him to pick up. He most likely comes in every day and works hard all day to make sure that the men and women don’t step on trash while they are commuting to work. We assume from this image that he might have a family that he is trying to provide for and put food on the table for just like the men and women going to work. The major difference is the amount of money that the men and women make compared to the janitor. Since the image is black and white it makes us feel that it was taken a long time ago, but we know from the caption that it was only taken in 2000. We also know that this image wasn’t staged and was most likely taken on a normal day which gives it more authenticity to the viewers.