The Narrator
The narrator is unnamed, and that is significant to his symbolic state in light of the fact that rebellious co-worker is given the named Janet. The narrator is not named because symbolically speaking he is not an individual. He represents the complicity of those who do not benefit from inequality of capitalism yet doggedly work against their own self-interest to maintain the system.
Method Acting
The narrator takes his job as an actor playing a caveman in the amusement park so seriously that, like a method actor, he stays in character even when no one is watching the performance. His commitment to the bit is symbolic of the nature of employment of in America. People are judged by what they do and not even by how well they do it. As a result, much of American is just like the narrator in feeling the need to take home their function as if it were a role to keep playing even when not doing the job. The most obvious example: people who insist on being referred to as Dr. So-and-So outside the doctor’s office or hospital.
Janet
Janet represents the danger that individualism poses to a smoothly running system dependent upon complete submission to authority even on the issues unrelated to work efficiency. Janet’s biggest crime is not really her rebelliousness because very little of that behavior directly impacts performance of her job, but rather that her attitude indicates an unwillingness to put the interests of her employers above her own. And that is the greatest transgression possible to a system easily undermined when individual rebellion becomes group rebellion .Janet’s true symbolic meaning is that she represents the single greatest danger to any employer: the employee who recognizes that she is being paid to do a job, but when she is not doing that job, the employer has no right to interfere in her life.
Linda
Linda is the new co-worker that replaces Janet once the narrator finally betrays her. She is young and more attractive than Janet as well as being a method actor like the narrator. But she is also emotionally distant. Ultimately, she symbolizes the rewards that employees of get for being team players: something nice to look that affords absolutely no positive change in their quality of life like a meaningless new title or being named Employee of the Month.
The Theme Park
The setting of a theme park is a nod to Jean Baudrillard’s groundbreaking philosophical text Simulacra and Simulation which identified theme parks as the ultimate consumerist realization of his basic theoretical proposition that human existence in the modern world is based on a foundation of simulated reality that is treated as authentic reality. The narrator is asked—and complies—to not merely play the part of a caveman in the theme park by his employers, but also to play a part in their construction of a simulated reality around that part which is fostered by the deceptions contained in the faxes the workers receive from management.
