Pronouns and Self-deprivation

Finished Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End, the author's first published and popular work. While reading, I focused on how Ferris' speaker uses the pronoun "we" to tell the story. The story is about what happens during a few weeks of downsizing at a Chicago ad agency, and its faceless voice is both a member and anonymous witness to this shrinking peer group of professionals.

I also noticed the speaker frequently recognizes as trivial the obsessions and concerns of this group--what he relates as the petty disputes and insignificant interests of an over-privileged sect. Ferris' storyteller is, naturally, one of these self-professed overpaid, over-insured professionals.

The element of self-deprecation made the characters somewhat more endearing. But, as the reader, it also left me unsure of where exactly I fit in: Have I been petty and undeserving, too? At the novel's conclusion, the reader is addressed as a member of the pseudo-saga, one of the group, the in-crowd.

The use of "we" and element of self-deprecation at first don't feel like pivotal elements to the storytelling. But they are for two reasons.

First, the self-deprecation starts off sounding a tad insincere, maybe, but eventually it feels obligatory, as if by rote. So I'm left with the feeling that this group, who are representatives of a generation, have been judged, and that the verdict on these people is that their predilections are trivial, a primary element of their zeitgeist, and that this is a real failing, comparatively speaking. So, it is a cultural truth that these people are undeserving overachievers. This truth is, to my mind, a real idea we have about the succession of generations in this country.

Second, this use of "we" and constant self-deprecation also allows the reader to excuse himself as he becomes engrossed by the story's "trivial" action. Perhaps it even affords him the tools to be engrossed. Points for that.