Julia Identity

Designer clothing, luxury cars, flashy handbags. These are just a few of the status symbols that differentiate the rich from the poor. These items are often used to determine the who’s who in today’s society by showing off wealth and status. Although others should not be based solely on their income, this judgement is sadly commonplace. The rich and the poor are segregated both by accident and on purpose in many situations and the lower class is the one that deals with the brunt of that discrimination.

This includes a story of her mother who waltzed into a social service agency dressed in an impressive outfit to set straight an issue that her elderly neighbor had trouble with over the past year in a single day (Cottom 1012). To elaborate, she justifies why poor people ordinarily make the choices they do, while conversely questioning them. In her text, “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, Cottom declares that “We want to belong” (1013). I agree that we want to belong, if you belong you are safe. At one point, her first professional job manager decided she was accordingly “. . . too classy to be on the call center floor.” (Cottom 1014) This proves that putting money into a brand name suit can have a positive influence on others, in this case she gained a high pay raise and her workload was decreased. If poor people spend money on classy outfits, the rich people will perceive them as their own.

To begin, the theme that I found the most important in these vignettes was identity. More specifically, the individual identity or the narrator, Sandra Cisneros. She has a difficult upbringing as

Though there are several themes in this novel, the central theme that connects them all is identity and finding who you are and where you belong in life and society. At the beginning of the novel, we see Edna is portrayed as typical mother and wife; "Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers" (1). Once Edna decides to live life the way she wants that is thrown out the window. The reason for this is due to Edna’s second side. She is said to have two sides "Even as a child, she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (7). The "sides" refer to as her inner and outer self. Edna’s outer self is the person who everyone around tells/wants her to be; Her inner self is the Edna that longs to be free, she wants to do what she feels like without people judging her. This is why the theme is identity from start to finish Edna is struggling between who others want her to be vs. what she wants to be.

It seems to most that those who have money have it all. They should buy all the unnecessary “junk” that one might find pleasure in owning, take everything for granted and view lower-class individuals as a group of wanna-bes. Think again. S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, very important propositions are portrayed through the writing techniques which link to another piece of writing “Poverty and Wealth” written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Just because you have everything, doesn’t mean you understand it's worth. Different classes have different experiences, allowing elaboration on the different characters.

I disagreed with this statement above because it is almost as if even though she know much about poverty as a woman in middle class she’s looking beneath them. I am not saying that what I interpret from this text is how she thought, but it is what I was lead to believe. She also mentions how no one acknowledges that she was a writer from my perspective, it was almost as if she felt that they should have been plastered with questions. She hid the fact that she was a writer with the exception of telling a few as if that would have changed the way her coworkers viewed her as a person. The question that stumbled upon me while reading this selection made me wonder why would a middle class woman wants to come back to experience the life of a poor person as if it was some sort of mockery. It seemed almost as if being poor living off of minimum wage is a choice whether a life decision. Does everybody believe that everybody can get out of poverty and become a part of the middle class or

Throughout the story, there are hints about Twyla and Roberta’s economic class. The story indicates that Twyla would be considered poor, because she is married to a firefighter and seems to live with her in-laws. Roberta on the other hand would be considered upper class, because her husband works with “computers and stuff…” (Morrison 246). Along with having the luxury of servants and a driver. In the 20th century it was rare to see black people having more money than white people because of power and oppression which made it hard for blacks to get a good paying job.

Class and financial poverty are frequent visible themes in the book. The most obvious is Joe’s lower class background and constant struggle to find enough money to attend school. Another example is the competitions between

Although most people in the United States of America do not live in an upper-class household, this term is often correlated with income, wealth, power, and prestige. In fact, “approximately one percent of the U.S. population is considered to fall in this stratum” (2017 p.260). Nevertheless, the middle class are the rulers of the United States of America. Per Conley, the middle class is “a term commonly used to describe those individuals with nonmanual jobs that pay significantly more than the poverty line – though this is a highly debated and expansive category, particularly in the United States of America, where broad swathes of the population consider themselves middle class” (2017 p.262). In particular, the middle class is often correlated with white-collar workers, such as accountants, teachers, and attorneys. An abundant number of families in the United States of America are considered to be “poor.” In accordance with Conley, “in 2015, the poverty line for a family of four was $24,250” (2017

In addition to her poor, low social class,

Q: How does being working class shape your identity? Although one may not think about their class everyday it does affect who you are, the things you do everyday, and how you act. For example, in Under the Feet of Jesus, the characters are farmers and are clearly on the lower end of the class spectrum. Although they don’t think about their social mobility everyday I believe that their families “working class” title has a huge effect on each of their identities.

Most people can determine what class a person is by just looking at the house that person lives in. If someone lives in a million-dollar home, then more than likely they are from the upper class. Middle class people usually own homes that are just big enough

They don’t have any sympathy for the lower class, and this shows that they are of a higher class. When the grandmother speaks of painting “this picture” this also refers that they are of a higher social class because the grandmother is able to take up in art class.

The power elite, or upper class, obtain their power not just from their money: their status is hereditary and preserved through history. Class itself cannot be defined without mentioning gender and race, as the majority of the upper class consists of white men. Those two axes of inequality mask the

Higher social classes have a lot of pride in their wealth and success so it is