Significant Passage Analysis
The passage that really drove home some key ideas of this book was when Bosch was giving his speech to the crowd of his workers and the families of the victims of the Oppau explosion. He's obviously wracked with guilt and feeling awkward in front of all these people. He wants to do right by them but he doesn't want to take on the idea that it was his fault that so many people had died. It had been the factory he had lovingly created through years of toil. "There is the sense that his company is somehow responsible for the grieving families before him. At the same time he refused to accept full responsibility and pushed to get his worker back to their jobs." (pg 200)
"The speech was a terrific strain for him, more so as he moved from the technological to the human side." (pg 198) Bosch was not used to having to speak intimately with a large amount of people and was not happy to talk to large amounts of people in the first place. Still, it was his duty to comfort the families and show them that the company did indeed care.
"The short speech, the most personal statement of Bosch's on record, is a statement to the opposing forces that drove and hounded him. On one side was his scientific pride, his utter belief in technological solutions to human problems. On the other was his human emotion, the shock he felt when his technology failed." This passage really showed a lot of Bosch's character and inner values. He really did care for his employees but he also was a businessman and probably wasn't very good at dealing with emotions in the first place. He ran his employees like a well-oiled machine but they weren't machines. He was used to machines, comfortable with them really. More comfortable than he was with humans.
"On the surface, he was quiet and as efficient as he could be; but on his way home after the memorial service, Bosch collapsed."(pg 200)
He kept his composure until his collapse, reaffirming the idea that he was an introverted, hardworking man who would go to extremes for his company and his science.
"The speech was a terrific strain for him, more so as he moved from the technological to the human side." (pg 198) Bosch was not used to having to speak intimately with a large amount of people and was not happy to talk to large amounts of people in the first place. Still, it was his duty to comfort the families and show them that the company did indeed care.
"The short speech, the most personal statement of Bosch's on record, is a statement to the opposing forces that drove and hounded him. On one side was his scientific pride, his utter belief in technological solutions to human problems. On the other was his human emotion, the shock he felt when his technology failed." This passage really showed a lot of Bosch's character and inner values. He really did care for his employees but he also was a businessman and probably wasn't very good at dealing with emotions in the first place. He ran his employees like a well-oiled machine but they weren't machines. He was used to machines, comfortable with them really. More comfortable than he was with humans.
"On the surface, he was quiet and as efficient as he could be; but on his way home after the memorial service, Bosch collapsed."(pg 200)
He kept his composure until his collapse, reaffirming the idea that he was an introverted, hardworking man who would go to extremes for his company and his science.