55 pages • 1 hour read
Russell RobertsThe Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Underpaid and Overworked”
On a late-December afternoon, Laura struggles to finish her lesson plans. She goes to the teacher’s lounge for coffee and encounters Sam, reading and sipping tea. What initially appears to be a casual chat about their job quickly turns to a debate on wage fairness. Laura says teachers are underpaid and overworked. Sam disagrees, saying that they aren’t underpaid. He asks her what “underpaid” really is, sparking comparisons between the wages and contributions of CEO’s and professional athletes versus teachers.
Sam argues that the beauty of the free market economic system is that everyone has the option to choose what they want to do with their talents. Laura compares Sam to Dr. Pangloss in Candide and says that “sometimes the best choice that’s available is still ghastly” (44). Sam counters, explaining that wages are largely determined by the labor market and as such merit is not in the eye of an individual beholder but determined on an impersonal larger scale. This bothers Laura because there’s no one in charge of the system to regulate it and ensure its fairness. However, Sam believes that the lack of a leader is a virtue: “In economic systems, having no one in charge disperses power. That dispersion of power prevents corruption unless everybody is corrupt” (45).
When Laura criticizes Sam’s defense of a system that privileges athletes over educators, Sam becomes even more animated and engaged. He fires a series of questions at Laura, trying to tease out a description of a better system: What, he asks, would happen if teachers were paid a huge amount of money? Would they be better teachers? Or would teaching devolve into a profession dominated by corruption? Laura insists that there are decent people, and working together they could find the best teachers. Sam posits that a bad system can eradicate decency. He offers an anecdote of a Russian coming to America, being awed by the plenty at the grocery store. When a certain item was missing from the shelf, Sam’s sister asked the manager, who went and got it. The Russian exchange student was delighted because she believed Sam’s sister was important because in Russia a regular person would have to make do with what was there. He says that kind of world—one in which who you know determines what you can and can’t have—is unimaginable to them. Laura insists that the world of American employment is precisely what he’s describing: The bosses are in charge and the workers must serve the boss’ interests. Sam concedes that that can happen, but counters that a boss who privileges his individual short-term benefit will have a poor organization that will likely fail.
Laura returns to the issue of teachers’ low pay. Sam explains that some jobs pay less because those jobs have intrinsic non-monetary rewards. Their discussion turns to Laura’s criticism of the overpaid CEO, but Sam explains that the job a CEO does is much harder than it appears to the layman, and that a bad CEO will struggle to keep a position. Laura suggests that bureaucracy can replace market forces and tells Sam she intends to go to law school. He is unimpressed but invites her to dinner. She declines, heading back to her classroom to finish working.
On his way out, Sam grabs his mail. There’s a letter from the school principal informing him that the investigation into allegations of misconduct has concluded with the recommendation for his dismissal. Principal Harkin gives Sam the option to resign and avoid further action by the board.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Turning Out the Lights”
The narrative shifts to the secondary plotline. George Sutherland, manager of the HealthNet plant in Matalon, Ohio, informs the employees that HealthNet is closing the plant and moving production to Mexico. In three months, both the warehouse and the production facility will close permanently, leaving all Matalon workers unemployed. George finishes informing his colleagues of the coming closure and gets back to work. He loves the warehouse and his work as a forklift driver. The space has always made him feel free and valuable. Now he isn’t sure what he’ll do, or what he’ll tell his family. He leaves his car at the factory and walks home to think. On the walk, he considers how challenging tonight will be for the town, and how challenging the days ahead will be. There is a limited amount of work and lots of people who will need a new income.
Charles plays golf with his public relations (PR) director, Rob Blankenship. Blankenship tries to balance his golf game to sufficiently let Charles feel there’s a competition while Charles wins easily. Blankenship takes advantage of Charles’s good mood to ask after the factory in Ohio, where George and others will lose their jobs. He urges Charles to donate to charity to ease the bad PR from moving jobs out of the country. Charles tells him to figure out how to spin the truth to make them look better rather than having him spend more money.
Erica sits in her armchair going over paperwork. At 11 o’clock, she jumps up and watches the news story on the Ohio factory closure and HealthNet. George’s wife explains that the loss of his job could lead to missing mortgage payments. Erica is aware that the outcry in response to this closure could force her to act before she has the case she really wants against HealthNet. Heather Hathaway, Charles’s current receptionist, also watches the news program. She decides to call the OCR hotline phone number provided at the end of the program.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Exploiting the Consumer”
Laura is dropping some blouses off for dry cleaning and runs into Sam. She expresses her frustration at the unfairness of dry-cleaning prices. When Sam suggests fairness isn’t the issue at play, Laura gets angry. Sam suggests they go for coffee while they talk. Laura thinks of the rumors she’s heard around school that Sam may be the subject of an investigation. They resume their discussion on the fairness of dry-cleaning costs.
Sam argues for the value of free-market competition for the consumer. He explains that in the market, businesses compete for customers. Although a profit-centric motivation seems to push goods to be worse and more expensive, if competition exists, then businesses must either increase the quality of the product or reduce their price. In reality, Sam tells Laura, businesses often end up doing both. Laura counters with the dangers of collusion, which degrade competition. Sam uses OPEC as an example of how rarely collusion can continue for very long. When Laura asks why things become more expensive over time, he points to inflation. He also argues that the quality-of-life comparison is much more important than dollar-to-dollar comparisons over time, even when considering inflation.
Laura asks about monopolies—given that in a monopoly there is no competition, doesn’t that impact the benefit of competition Sam describes? Sam offers that monopolies are typically short-lived in a free-market economy. Even if one company manages to provide the best and cheapest product for long enough that they drive competitors out of the market, someone will invent something new that will compete with the original product. Laura shifts the discussion to the question of benevolence in the market.
She challenges Sam’s picture of the business world as seemingly civilized and concerned with the well-being of customers. She says, it’s “a different, grubbier struggle, more like rugby where the consumer is often ground into the mud” (72). Sam uses The Ritz-Carlton, Southwest Airlines, Fed-Ex, and other successful companies to demonstrate that genuinely successful businesses have to privilege the consumer and focus not on profit alone, but on the satisfaction and happiness of their customers. He points out that in It’s a Wonderful Life, neither hero, George, nor villain, Potter, are good businessmen because in reality, a successful businessman must both look beyond greed and remember profit.
The discussion of the film leads to a comparison of artistic representations of business versus the reality of what business does. Laura asks Sam about his exercise in class in which he gives money away, using that exercise as an example of greed. He explains that self-interest is a fact of human existence as illustrated by Adam Smith. He also argues that self-interest is morally neutral. He uses the example of bakers who get up a 3:30 am to provide enough fresh-baked goods to their customers. The bakers’ reasons could be multi-faceted, but ultimately they do it because of self-interest, yet the customer benefits as well. Laura agrees that the market is impressive and contains beauty. She reasserts, however, that regulation can enhance the market and improve the good parts while reducing or removing the bad parts like faulty products, false advertising, and dangerous working conditions. Sam cautions that interfering with a complex system can have unintended and unknown consequences.
Laura returns to the dry-cleaning question, so Sam takes her back to the dry cleaner who explains that smaller shirts don’t fit on their machines, so they do them by hand, which is why women’s shirts cost more. When Laura concedes the argument, Sam encourages her to keep pushing. Sam again invites her to dinner, but she refuses, saying she has too much work to do. Sam decides on his walk home to try to talk to Laura about something besides economics.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Magic Fingers”
In the secondary plotline, Heather Hathaway waits for an opportunity to expose Charles and his company before she resigns. When Charles asks her to bring in the document shredder, she watches carefully for him to go outside for a cigarette. She grabs some documents, copies them, and returns them to the shredding pile. When she leaves work, she gets the OCR address and sends the documents—long columns of numbers—to Erica. Erica receives the documents and studies them, waiting to see what they have to offer.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Sam and Laura’s relationship develops as the year moves forward. Both conversations in this section take place as pseudo coffee dates. Both conversations end with Sam’s invitation to dinner and Laura’s refusal. The tenor of their relationship becomes warmer in this second section, as Laura finds out more about Sam’s values and Sam becomes more and more intrigued by her willingness to engage in these debates. Their debates are cooperative, reflecting the deepening of their interest and respect in one another as well as highlighting the benefits of good-natured discussion and debate. This foreshadows the character of the relationship they will pursue throughout the novel and that is projected at the end of the novel. Because they can share their perspectives and challenge one another, their disagreements are a strength rather than a weakness. Still, Laura is hesitant to pursue a relationship with someone who seems so diametrically opposed to her values.
This section focuses on wages, price setting, and the inner workings of market systems. The Self-Interest Versus Altruism theme is developed in Sam’s discussion of the baker providing the customer what they need out of self-interest. Immediately before the description of the baker is the first of two direct references to “the Invisible Heart” in the market. The Invisible Heart symbolizes the capacity of self-interest in a free market to manufacture compassionate acts regardless of the actor’s actual compassion. This indicates the potential of self-interest and altruism sharing space rather than being in opposition. That connection reflects the growing connection between Sam and Laura: Though they seem fundamentally opposed, the longer they’re in proximity the more they complement each other rather than clash with one another.
The description of the Matalon factory’s closing and Charles’s relationship with Blankenship illuminate The Ethics of Free Markets Versus Government Regulation. Sam supplies essentially all the arguments in defense of capitalism and free markets. Although Laura and Andrew disagree with his points and challenge his perspectives, the parallel plot supplies the personal and emotional elements that influence the counter position to Sam’s. George’s first-hand experience walking home and thinking about the imminent destruction of his town and possibly his family challenges the ethics of closing a factory to benefit the corporation. Regular people who are simply working hard to provide a good life for themselves and their family’s will be out of work through no fault of their own. George is shown to be a responsible and competent worker who has great passion for his job. The emotional message of the factory’s closing is that Charles and CEOs like him ignore the plight of their own employees in favor of the bottom line—just as Laura argues in her debates with Sam. Charles’s characterization when Blankenship suggests donating to charity further emphasizes Laura’s point. Charles refuses to spend the company’s money to look good and insists that Blankenship “spin” the story to make Charles look better.
Sam and Laura’s discussion of It’s a Wonderful Life and the characterizations of George Baily and Mr. Potter deepen the importance of the film’s motif in the novel as well as introducing the theme of Art’s Ability to Forge Connections. Developing from Laura’s initial sense that the film was incongruous with the thrust of Sam’s worldview and lessons, Sam discusses the film with Laura. Sam says he loves the movie because it provides a dual picture of bad businessmen. The discussion of the film highlights the problem with oversimplifying a depiction of business or economics. He also says he loves the movie because it makes him cry, which helps to endear him to Laura—just as she is surprised at the contrast of color to black-and-white when she sees the poster, she is surprised at the contrast of Sam’s emotional capacity with his chosen field. However, the discussion of It’s a Wonderful Life also reinforces the Invisible Heart concept because Sam doesn’t distinguish compassion from a capitalist economic system.
