An Angel For Bob Analysis

The Jello Introduction
The poem An Angel for Bob by Richard Stevenson is a poem about two men working at a store one training the other to stock shelves and the product falls off the shelves causing one of the men to have a melt down and quit his job leaving the store. Those events work together to prove that in unfamiliar situations it is often hard to understand what acquaintances are going through in their personal lives, but through their actions we can sympathise and come to terms with their behaviours. In this essay I will discuss how Bob and the speaker do not know each other very well, and how it is hard for the speaker to relate to Bobs problems in life along with what the Jello packets symbolize in the context of the poem and the
In the beginning of the poem it is clear that the speaker is a young adult because of the way he describes his former jobs, he has worked labouring summer jobs and tried to be a waiter. The tone of the second stanza portrays the speaker of being thankful for his job but not particularly pleased about working with Bob, since Bob is training the speaker it is assumed that he is new to the job and must have just met Bob recently. When first meeting someone especially through work it is common to not know much about their personal lives which makes it hard to understand why they do certain actions. The speaker notices there is something somewhat off with Bob that day but puts it aside. “He’s not all there, but never mind;” (Stevenson ,16), acknowledging that Bob may be struggling with difficult situation the mood of the speaker about working with Bob changes from a bitter standpoint to one that is a slightly more understanding toward Bobs mindset that
The act of making an angel for Bob could symbolize the speaker finally having full respect for Bob, because angels are often a sign of the divine and heaven which is the final freedom. The speaker saying that he is going to make the angel with “calisthenic precision”(Stevenson, 45) illustrates that the angel will be made with perfect meticulousness which is a sign of respect because it would take so a lot of effort to get an angel to look perfect. The speaker never stopped Bob to ask what he was doing or try to convince him not to quit he just lets it happen and that shows the speaker really respects Bobs decision to quit the