Levy Pants

The office of Levy Pants is “perhaps the most disreputable office that he ever entered … The atmosphere of the place reminded Ignatius of his own room, and his valve agreed by opening joyfully.” This is the location of Ignatius’ soon to be workplace; it is a place so awful that it is suitable for Ignatius Reilly himself. The excuse for a manager in the office is Mr. Gonzalez. He shows up at work an hour early every morning to tidy up a bit for the other workers that will more than likely not show up. As a matter of fact, his main concern at the moment is getting employees, since none of them last for much over an hour or two, and “promptness was sufficient excuse for promotion.”The only employee that has been around has been around for about half of a century. Miss Trixie is an old woman who works in the office and is not being retired because of Mrs. Levy (Wife of the owner) “thinks its better for Miss Trixie to keep active.” She is described to never be, “perfectly vertical; she and the floor always met at an angle less than ninety degrees.” All in all, she is a very old woman who offers very little help to Mr. Gonzalez, whom she calls Gomez out of forgetfulness (she calls Ignatius Gloria, the name of an ex-employee at Levy Pants), but she is help nonetheless.



The last component of Levy Pants (excluding Ignatius) is Mr. and Mrs. Levy. Mr. Levy’s father started levy pants and it seems as if Mr. Levy is going to close it. In the mist of one of their bitter battles, Mrs. Levy said, “you’ve thrown your fathers business down the drain. That’s the tragedy of your life.” Mr. Levy answered, “Who wants that old factory?” He has no will to keep it running. The book discusses the rarity of his visits to the company and his lack of interest in anything that is related to the company. This is a major roll of Ignatius who has dedicated himself to revitalizing Mr. Levy’s interest in the company.



Then the company was hit with a level 5 hurricane: Ignatius Reilly. Ignatius takes the job as a secretary, a basic filer, but that is not all he does. As a matter of face, he does not do that very job he was hired for. Instead, he throws out the files that he has been told to file – on the count of, of course, his valve upsetting him deeply – and takes upon himself other office jobs such as decorating. One of his main projects for which “filing, Alphabetizing – all of that must wait.” The project” Painting a cross, perhaps to make the office more “spiritual”. Another of his practices is showing up to work an hour late every day. His philosophy is simply why waste and hour in the morning doing groggy work when you can come in an hour later and start off doing more that sufficient work. He also neglected to do his traditional work when he needed to go and visit the factory. His visit he chronicled in a ten page diary entry where he revealed the extremely low conditions and pay of the factory workers. He also noted how much he enjoyed the workers individuality, ignorantly discussing how the workers were working on personal sewing projects and chatting as opposed to doing their required job. At one point, he turned off their music which he found disgusting and found that he had a minor uprising on his hands. He quickly turned it back on and did a dance at which the workers laughed; he, of course, thought they were laughing with him.



The great comedy and irony of Ignatius’ employment is the ignorance with which Mr. Gonzalez employs him. He wonders, “What fairy godmother had dropped Mr. Ignatius J. Reilly on the worn and rotting steps of Levy Pants?” This erroneous thought obviously comes from the disillusionment that he actually has a worker younger than Jesus’ aunt that comes to work every day. As you can see, he is greatly mistaken. Ignatius only does work when his valve permits him to, which, I can tell you, is not very often. Mr. Gonzalez thinks that Ignatius is, “four workers in one,” and notices that because of his, “competent hands, the filing seemed to disappear.”



The dysfunction of the company comes directly from those who run it and work for it. The workers are all incompetent and have no apparent purpose other than to run the company into the ground as fast as possible. From the top, Mr. Levy could not care less about the way the company goes, to the bottom, where the workers are more interested in making their daughters dresses that making levy pants, Levy Pants is a company that is infected with the parasite of failure.