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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: on a smaller or larger scale. The government clerks, forced to be
together for nine hours of the day, looked upon their office as a sort
of class-room where they had tasks to perform, where the head of the
bureau was no other than a schoolmaster, and where the gratuities
bestowed took the place of prizes given out to proteges,--a place,
moreover, where they teased and hated each other, and yet felt a
certain comradeship, colder than that of a regiment, which itself is
less hearty than that of seminaries. As a man advances in life he
grows more selfish; egoism develops, and relaxes all the secondary
bonds of affection. A government office is, in short, a microcosm of
society, with its oddities and hatreds, its envy and its cupidity, its
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