Two texts set in the mid-1900’s that discuss and examine the significance of class position, power and privilege is Scott Russell Sander’s text “The Men We Carry in Our Minds” and John Berger’s text “The Suit and The Photograph”. Both texts explore social class and that one’s social class greatly affects the way one is perceived and the course of their life and opportunities offered. Within the texts, they both highlight the gap between lower and upper-class residents. While both of these texts consist of a very similar central purpose and both attempt to persuade the reader about the existence of class in their time, both writers use very difference strategies to convey their thesis. Although both Sanders and Beger’s texts consist of strengths …show more content…
Without either of these, a reader can come to the conclusion the argument has no real significant or real reliability. Berger references important writers/critics in his text, such as Walter Benjamn, Goethe and Doblin at the start of the text. However, his main evidence that he refers to and uses primarily throughout the text is the photos of men in suits. He states villagers and workers were persuaded to choose and buy suits by publicity, pictures, mass media, and salesmen. (39) As well as this, he uses the image of the villagers in suits to show that he believes class difference is evident. He continues to say it is easy to determine lower class and upper class by the appearance of the suits, lower class not looking as nice. While he includes the date of the images and source, the use of the photos could be criticized, as he is using images to argue such strong claims. Berger states in a photograph shown in his text that the social class is evident when the lower class musicians are wearing suits. He uses some emotive language and uses negative adjectives to describe them as looking “uncoordinated, bandy-legged, barrel-chested, low-arsed, twisted or scalene”. This could be faulty reasoning as Berger’s has made a direct statement claiming the musicians look like all these negative things, giving the reader the question of can this be accurately be determined from the photos, or is Berger’s opinion and bias, as the photos are of low quality and may not necessarily look ‘bad’ to other people. If a reader does not find Berger’s evidence convincing or generalizing, they may not be able to be persuaded by Berger’s argument and disregard it. For instance, Donald Hall has said: “If we cannot support our generalization, we must abandon it, or at least we must admit the worthlessness of limited examples as proof of anything” (313). Unlike Berger in this example Sanders has
The novel Keeper’n Me was written by Richard Wagamese and first published in 1994. It was later published in Canada in 2006. The novel is about a man named Garnet Raven who was taken away from his parents and the Ojibway way of life when he was three, and put into various foster homes and forced into the white way of life. When he was around 20 he ended up doing something that got him thrown into jail. While in jail, Garnet received a letter from his Ojibway family and decided to return to his first home, White Dog, once he got out of jail. Once he returned to White Dog, Garnet started to learn many things from his family, friends, and a man named Keeper. He discovered a sense of place, and self, and started to make his way back into the Ojibway
In “The Men We Carry On Our Minds,” Scott Sanders uses binary thinking to perceive things that affect him from a holistic perspective; however, he fails to take into account that his position as a white male grants him unearned privilege. Sanders essay addresses multiple identities, unearned privilege and binary thinking. Thesis?
Silence — the sound of quiet, the state of mind, the lack of meaning — all these pertain to its definition. Communication is expanding, noise is increasing, music is becoming more obtainable as people search desperately for a moment of peace or a breeze of silence. As the scarcity of physical silence increases, its value as a rare commodity increases as well. The idiom “Silence is golden” may perhaps only grow closer to reality as time passes, as exemplified by the white noise machines or silent fans entering the market and fictionalized in Kevin Brockmeier’s short story, “The Year of Silence.” In light of this, Brockmeier explores the value of silence and noise in his story without putting one above the other. Through strange clues and hidden
In America, many people are divided by a class system. Within our society, many people find themselves not interacting much with people outside of their class and can rarely find something in common with people of different financial backgrounds. In Andre Dubus the Third’s writing “The Land of No: Love in A Class-Riven America, he speaks about his experience with his roommate who comes from an affluent background opposed to his less advantaged upbringing. In “The Land of No: Love in A Class-Riven America, Andre Dubus the Third displays that the experiences the people face from different classes can differ entirely and therefore it makes it difficult to identify with someone outside of your class.
Williams, A. N. (2006). OUR KIND OF PEOPLE: SOCIAL STATUS AND CLASS AWARENESS IN POST-RECONSTRUCTION AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION. Retrieved December 1, 2013, from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/indexablecontent?id=uuid:c9d7fd9d-c5df-4dea-aa22-35820de5878e&ds=DATA_FILE
In Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization, she aims to describe the concepts of manliness and masculinity at the turn of the century. Bederman explains that the concept of what it means to be a man is ever changing as a result of the ideology of the time as well as the material actions of the men. During the Progressive Era, many forces were at work that put pressure on the supremacy of white, middle class men. Some of these forces included the growing move toward empowered women, the unionization of the working class, and the move from self-employment to big, corporate business. She delves into the way that both racism and sexism were used to build up the concept of masculinity and the turn of the century discourse on civilization.
Shipler, David. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. First Vintage Books Ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print
Balls, formal dinners, and social gatherings dominate people’s view of the nineteenth century. Upper-class women lived a life of splendor and grandeur, and the white, gentle hands of those women hardly lifted to do any work. Most would strive to attain such a life because of its outward appearance; however, masked behind the smiles and parties, suppression ran high. Men dominated their households, and they repressed their wives. Life did not live up to the expectation of many women as they struggled against the controlling and authoritative male figures in their lives.
“On Being Black…” is an autobiographical essay discussing the black working class and how in order for black women to “have-it-all” they must have a career, home, and husband. But when Bonner refers to the younger generations, they find flaws with the working class’ expectations on becoming middle to upper class. The Young Black generation challenges the ideology of what it means to “have-it-all,” while dismantling institutional racism to create their own ideological racial uplift. In both works, she questions racial categorization and the divisions among class amongst African Americans, a reoccurring theme for her later
Social class has always been a controversial issue in America. This idea, that individuals are defined by their wealth, is explored by Jeannette Walls in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Walls shows, through a manifold of personal anecdotes, how growing up in a dysfunctional household with financially inept parents affected her and her siblings. Growing up in this environment, Jeannette was exposed to a very different perception of the world around her than those of higher social status. However, despite the constant hardships she faced, Walls makes it clear that a lower social status does not define an individual as inferior to those in a higher class.
In America, many people are divided by what we comprehend as a class system. Within our society, a multitude of people finds themselves not interacting often with those outside of their class and can rarely find similarities with people with a different financial status. In Andre Dubus’ writing “The Land of No: Love in A Class-Riven America”, he speaks about his experience with his girlfriend who comes from an affluent background opposed to his less advantaged upbringing. Dubus shows that the experiences people face from different classes can differ entirely and therefore it makes it difficult to identify with someone outside of your class. In Andre Dubus’ writing, “The Land of No: A Class-Riven America” he is showing
In the late nineteenth century many European, and especially British, authors, play writes and poets wrote about the inadequacies of the upper class. Often times the author will not blatantly express his feelings, but rather he will hide them behind the plot or characters in his story. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde mocks the values of the upper class. By fully exaggerating the flaws of the upper class, Wilde succeeds in expressing his beliefs that men and women of the upper class are shallow, foolish, and have no respectable values.
Since the country’s beginning, race, gender, and class have been very important factors in a person’s experience in the United States of America. The meaning of race, gender differences, and the separation of class have changed over United States history. For many Americans, their perceptions of class and race and the degree to which gender affect people’s lives, often depends on what their race, gender, and class are, too. There are differences between the reality of America, what is represented as American reality in media, and the perceived reality of America. Americans as well as those looking at America from an outside perspective may have questions and confusions regarding what the real connections are to race, class, and gender are in America. The paper tries to clarify and explore how these issues connect and play out in real life.
A clear theme recognized while reading “A Modest Proposal” is the division of social classes during this time. The classes Swift refers to is between the lower class poor tenants and the upper class wealthy landlords. The
The prejudice the women tolerate is evidenced by their tendency to dress in men’s clothing in order to be heard or considered (Olson). As women, their voices are inhibited or disregarded; they are overshadowed and overlooked by society. Portia, for example, has little choice but to consent to being the prize in her “loving” late father’s lottery. All decisions are made in regard to her future and life is influenced by men. The fact that the father is deceased does not diminish his power. In fact, his status a...