What are the motifs in A Thousand Clowns by Herb Gardner?

Middle-class Life is a recurring idea in the novel. Large groups of people in a given class share values and beliefs as well as social and economic status. Sociologists describe, for example, a set of values and beliefs found in capitalist societies among the middle classes. The middle classes, they observe, are particularly driven by a work ethic, a belief that people's worth derives chiefly from the work they do. People meeting each other for the first time are apt to identify themselves by their jobs, rather than by other characteristics—it is normal and acceptable to ask a new acquaintance "What do you do?" For people who hold the work ethic, a person who does not work is strange, someone to be avoided or examined.