The Organization Man

by Paige H.

A macrocosmic view of family life in the 50’s might reveal prosperity, happiness, and stability. However, as we now have the ability to look back and dissect family life in the suburbs, our understanding has drastically changed. In reading books such as Holy Land and Feminine Mystique, we come away with a much darker version of what life was really like. We now know that housewives were really not as happy as they appeared and this lifestyle was not as liberating as it had been made out to be. However, what about her counterpart, could life of been just as dull for the husband as it was for her?

In order to answer this question we have to understand the pressures and duties that faced men of this decade. Life in the 50’s was a culmination of the then current Cold War situation and the Great Depression which preceded it. According to Elaine May, author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, the Great Depression played a huge role in the obligations and responsibilities of men in the 50’s. “Advertisers during the depression years played on the men’s guilt at a time when many men felt responsible for placing the security of their families in jeopardy” (May, 41). May talks about how the advertisements were geared at men, especially fathers, and urged them to make sure the same fate would not befall their sons (May, 41). So here we can see that the sons who would grow up to be husbands in the 50’s were already instilled with the notion that they must fill the role of the breadwinner in order to be successful. These young boys saw how harsh the Depression was, and understood it as their duty to prevent this from happening again. These notions created two very distinct roles which should not overlap, that of the housewife and the husband. It was very quickly established that the wife should remain in the home as the homemaker while the husband should work outside of home in order to provide for his family. A couple that could achieve this quintessential lifestyle was presumably happy. We know, however, that it wasn’t as cut and dry as this.

Women began to sink into a pool of loneliness and boredom, and it became apparent that life wasn’t as great for them as it seemed. The women’s liberation movement would act as an outlet for many women to vent their unhappiness. However, the same means of expression was not available for men. Instead many men took upon the role of what William H. Whyte coined “The Organization Man.” As we’ve touched upon this idea a little, we know that the organization man was both dedicated and loyal to his company in a way that mirrored the behavior of a robot. In Whyte’s book titled The Organization Man any man has potential to fall into this category. From the man at seminary who will someday find himself caught up in the politics of church, to the trainee about to join Du Pont, whatever it may be, working class men have fallen victim to the machine (Whyte, 3). With such pressure to provide for the family, the rise of corporate culture, and the demise of traditional protestant work ethic, it was no wonder men were forced into mundane and seemingly monotonous jobs.

David Riesman, author of The Lonely Crowd mentions the shift of society from being ruled by the inner to being ruled by the outer (Bennett, 86). Meaning, people were looking to their peers and society around them for reassurance of their successfulness. I see this as taking a huge toll on men because in what was already a patriarchal society, men were constantly in the spotlight and thus the outer became the means to defining who they were. In turn, men lost the ability to become individuals and instead were forced to conform to the role of breadwinner, just as women were forced to conform to the role of the housewife.

Edward Hopper’s painting known as “Night Wonderers” depicts very clearly the solitude a man of this decade would be confronted with. The painting embodies the idea of male conformity and the loneliness that came from it. In the painting we can see the two men dressed exactly alike reinforcing the ideal of the organization man while at the same time the dark and dreary setting plays on the deep depression many of these men were faced with. So while we tend to be very familiar with the oppression of women we must not cut ourselves short at that. Men too were facing identity issues and the societal pressures were just as strong on men as they were on women.

Sources:

May, Elaine. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. Basic Books, 1988.

Whyte, William. The Organization Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

Bennett, Amanda. The Death of the Organization Man. New York: William Morrow and Company inc, 1990.