Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) is renowned for grappling with grave themes throughout her opus, from the problem of evil to the conditions for revolution. Additionally, she developed a framework for thinking about something typically considered fairly quotidian and ordinary—the human experience of work. Posited in her famous treatise The Human Condition, her theoretical distinctions between labor, work, and action offer a compelling typology of the human effort we call work. This chapter provides an overview of Arendt’s categories of labor, work, and action, which together comprise the vita activa, before focusing on the category of work and its relationship to the possibility of human action in a free society. Given the political implications of Arendt’s argument about action and political life, this chapter necessarily explores the maintenance of free societies and the fragile position of the action in our modern era. Lastly, this chapter concludes by connecting these themes surfaced in Arendt’s exploration of the vita activa to some of the other major themes of her work, like totalitarianism, evil, and revolution.