Right Place, Wrong Time
(Three Messages From the Poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray)
More often than not, authors of the pre-enlightenment/enlightenment era wrote pieces of art that were critiquing society in one form or another. There are many types of works that provide you with the ability to write this critique, while still getting the message across. There is satire, directly showing the critique, or many times using other characters that can display society of certain areas. Back in the enlightenment era, there was usually a lot of talk about the social class difference. It was insane the split that was seen between the poverty stricken people, and the wealthy high class people. There wasn’t even really an in between either, it was simply just the two classes. The author Thomas Gray was an English poet that was very good at critiquing the ways of society in his time. One of his most famous poems is called Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. In this story he is criticizing the fact that those in a state of poverty were looked at completely different than others. To begin with, he really points out that those in a state of poverty are looked at as animals. These people don’t even get the time of day from the wealthier people, they aren’t good enough to them. The narrator of the story realizes this when he is in a churchyard and all of the buried bodies don’t have any significance to their grave. As soon as you see a wealthy person’s grave, it
The use of this type of ironical satire is used in a way to show the discourse that one feels about the things that the gentlefolk are doing. The continuous use of the word “poor” to show what a lost cause and how unprivileged the gentlefolk must be, Wilkie Collins says, “poor souls...poor empty heads...poor idle hands.” The term poor is used often as a term to belittle someone, and Collins is using it as a coping mechanism to cope with the way the gentle folk are acting, in a sense “they are acting this way because they have something wrong with them, they do not know any better.” The passage then goes on to say,”... and dropping grit into all the victuals in the house…” The speaker knows that not all the ailments that they had caught in the wilderness. The use of the word “all” is an exaggeration by the narrator to furthermore show the tipathy with the gentlefolk’s way of
Ascher uses compassion to make us feel sad for the homeless man at the end of the story by showing us a great deal of pathos. This is when she really starts to get you thinking. She says “Could it be that this was the response of the mother who offered the dollar, the French woman who gave the food? Could it be that the homeless, like those ancients, are reminding us of our common humanity? Of course, there is a difference. This play doesn 't end- and the players can 't go home” (3). Following this, she is trying to get us to understand where these people really trying to do acts of kindness or were they just trying to get this poor man out of their heir. She makes you think how their expressions and actions tie into this and if they are a trying to get him out of the way, why? We need to help them. Another way the author makes us feel bad for the homeless is by saying “His hands continue to dangle at his sides. He does not know his part. He does not know that acceptance of the gift and gratitude are what make this transaction complete. The baby, weary of the unwavering stare, pulls its blanket over its head. The man does not look away. Like a bridegroom waiting at the altar, his eyes pierce the white veil.
The essay begins with Henry George referring to his audience as ladies and gentlemen. He then goes on to state that poverty is a crime. A crime not committed by the poor, but rather the poor as victims of the crime. He also does not wholly blame those perpetrating the crime, he also gives a kind of notion that the victim has a hand the situation he or she finds themselves in. He says the poverty is a curse that not only the poor have but is on every level of society even the rich. He says the rich also suffer because it is like the air all the community breathes. They too must breathe it.
Though it is not one of the main themes in the novel, poverty and its effects on people can be seen abundantly in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The demonstration of poverty that I chose to discuss is how wealth causes a person to act toward others. The most notable examples are Janie’s three husbands, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake, and the way they treat Janie. In the novel, the wealthier a man is, the more power he has over people and the more entitled he feels.
Since the story uses a certain object, the Jacket, as the meaning of several issues, it primarily focuses on the narrator's poverty-stricken family. First of all, an example of the poverty is demonstrated when the narrator complains that the jacket "was so ugly and big that I knew I'd have to wear it a long time"(paragraph 3). It is clear that his lack of money was a problem in which he
Being poverty stricken is something that really humiliates him because people view him differently. He tried his best to take care of himself and look clean so he could fit in. He would go to Mister Ben’s grocery store to get ice and wait for it to melt so he could was his clothes. He felt shame when he received any help. Gregory explains, “There was shame in going to the Worthy Boy’s Annual Christmas dinner for you and your kind, because everybody knew what a worthy boy was” (167).
Often throughout the book she mentions that it is said that "you're paid what you're worth", saying that little pay results in you not being to good of a person. With that label they were looked down on and viewed kind of as untouchables. They had low pay, long hours, no overtime pay, and no benefits which leads to low socio-economic-status a job that no one wants to pursue. She stressed that poverty wasn’t a sustainable condition, it's a state of emergency. Citizens in the lower classes are left to fend for themselves and the ten, eight, or six dollar jobs are all that's there for them. What she would encourage them to do is to demand to be paid what they're worth because in the end they will be better off.
Religious spaces, characterized by Thomas Tweed, are “differentiated,” “interrelated,” and “kinetic.” As a sacred city with spiritual significance in three major religions, Jerusalem is depicted thoroughly in the Hebrew Bible and illustrated as one of the spaces Tweed defines. The Bible emphasizes that Jerusalem was chosen by God and honored by Israelites, which differentiates it as a special, singular space; the description of Solomon’s Temple shows that the Holy City was interrelated to economic power and involved in the judgment of civil cases. Moreover, the conquest, development and destruction of Jerusalem illustrate the city as a kinetic space, reflecting the unsettled history of the Iron Age. These characteristics all make Jerusalem a religious and political center from the ancient Near East time to present day, guiding the footsteps of believers around the world.
In Baudelaire's poem "The Eyes of the Poor," the poet Charles Baudelaire creates an image for himself as a poet longing to create a union of souls with a woman whom he loves until the end of the poem. As a dissolute man-about-town he talks about the cafes he and the woman spend time in. He yearns to be one with her soul in a manner that eludes both of them. While part of the Romantic aesthetic was the idealization of the pastoral, Baudelaire shows the side that reflects the urban side of the Romantic. Baudelaire projects himself onto the image of other souls, but rather than the pure, untouched souls of rural folk, he sees an image of the urban poor that tears at his heartstrings, although he does not say so explicitly in the poem.
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn all explore the effects of wealth and class on society. On closer inspection, a common strand seems to form between these three classic novels. The idea that wealth (and the social class that comes with it) determines a person is refuted via the use of deep characterization. In the end, it seems, wealth and class don’t determine a person’s moral integrity and value, but rather how they interact those two things. Ultimately, Twain makes a case for the lower-classes, that even the poor (and enslaved) can be truly good, setting a better example than the wealthy. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, shows that rich aren’t entirely superficial, rather, that they can be great men. Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a bit more of an oddball than the other two novels, focusing instead on a protagonist that leaps from riches (under the supervision of a cruel aunt), to rags, then back to riches once again. Still, this common strand holds true between the three books: no class, poor or rich, is entirely exempt from moral bankruptcy. A poor person like Pap Finn can be morally corrupt, while a rich man like Jay Gatsby can be good. All character-based judgments in these books lay solely on the person they are judging, blind of the class and wealth that surrounds them.
The circumstance surrounding her addresses concerning poverty is where the author makes an appeal to pathos. She states,“the poor
Life is not always easy, at some point people struggle in their life. People who are in lower class have to struggle for a job every day and people who are in upper class having their own problem to deal with. These ideas are very clear in Mary Oliver “Singapore” and Philip Schultz “The Greed” and Philip Levine “What Work Is”. In Singapore a woman works at airport and her job is to clean bathroom and in The Greed Hispanic get a job first before white and black because they take lower wages. All three poems deal with class in term of the society. The moral of the poems is that people don’t understand the perspectives of each other and by assuming, it just leads to more hatred. The author of Singapore, the author of The Greed and the author of “What Work Is”, poem have similar perspectives of survival in lower class.
Take everything you know about racism, sexism, and religionism and toss it out the window, because there’s an impediment to prosperity that is often underlooked: Classism. Classism is a suppression which always has and always will continue to affect our everyday lives. The disparities that presently exist between the lower and higher classes form a condition where it is unlikely to allow for equality for anyone. The short stories “A Rose of Emily,” written by William Faulkner, and “Desiree’s Baby,” written by Kate Chopin, offered several depictions of classism within a society. “A Rose for Emily” recounts the life of an isolated, aristocratic woman named Emily Grierson who symbolically represents the demise of the old Southern society. Similarly, “Désirée’s Baby” portrays classism present in mid-nineteenth century Southern society in conjunction with the inequalities that exist between race. Class prejudice plays an important role as it was behind the emergence of the characters’ unspeakable actions. In “A Rose for Emily” and “Desiree’s Baby,” classism is emphasized and provokes arrogance, denial, and the demise of others.
A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless
When jane was questioned if she had poor family would she rather live with them and be happy or stay miserable with the reeds she made it evident that despite her unhappiness she preferred to live with the rich because poverty was looked down. Those who were poor were treated badly, jane eyre is a perfect example.