Post Office

In Post Office, Charles Bukowski portrays Hank Chinaski’s resistance to authority as both a personal creed and a reaction to the dehumanizing structure of bureaucratic labor. The Postal Service’s impossible delivery routes, rigid hierarchies, and mechanical repetition reflect mid-century American occupational conformity, a system designed to reward obedience and punish individuality. From the beginning, Hank recognizes that the institution values subservience over competence. His work as a substitute carrier exposes him to supervisors who wield petty power through arbitrary rules and constant surveillance. Instead of conforming, Hank undermines authority through sarcasm, deliberate carelessness, and minimal compliance. When faced with the cruelty of his supervisor, Jonstone, he refuses to “suck up” or perform false respect, even when it means losing work. His informal resistance is neither heroic nor organized: It’s a series of instinctive, everyday refusals that allow him to preserve his autonomy within a system built to erase it.

Hank’s interactions with Jonstone, whose tyranny defines Hank’s early years at the post office, form the basis for his aversion to authority throughout the rest of the novel. Jonstone withholds routes, assigns impossible workloads, and writes Hank up for trivial infractions.