John Green’s Looking for Alaska tells the story of Miles Halter and his adventures at an Alabaman boarding school. Miles falls in love with a peculiar girl named Alaska Young, whose mysterious persona entregues Miles from the beginning. Alaska’s traumatic past has lead to her present erratic behaviour, and she manages to get herself into trouble throughout the novel. Alaska’s sudden and shocking death has a lasting impact on Miles, as he struggles to find purpose after the death of his first love. Alaska’s character in particular demonstrates the concept of psychoanalytic theory, feminism and marxism.
The theory of feminism is prevalent in the novel Looking for Alaska, and is mainly demonstrated through the life and actions of Alaska Young. Alaska is surrounded by boys throughout the entirety of her life in novel, but her strong feminist views are not hindered. She vocalizes her feminist opinions often and is intolerant of her friend’s sexist remarks/attitudes. One day, Alaska, Miles and the Colonial are in the boy’s room when Colonial makes a comment about a girl’s breasts. In protest, Alaska shouts back: “DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN’S BODIES!” (Green 34). Alaska herself is a strong female character who is often recognized for her intelligence throughout her novel, and not just her sex appeal.
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The book has the typical element of “rich vs. poor” demonstrated through the Weekday Warriors. The Weekday Warriors are students who only stay on campus on weekdays, and on weekends drive to their parent’s estates. They are considered “popular”, and are blatantly selfish and narcissistic. Though this is not a crucial aspect of the book, it demonstrates the class separation that begins at a very young
The Brothers faced this challenge in their, largely, futile attempts to achieve middle class status through achieving a proper education. Macleod highlights that, historically, the “overall structure of class relations from one generation to the next” is extremely reluctant to change(4). The Brothers evince this in their inability to earn work with greater wages than their parents, forcing them to live in working class neighborhoods like they did. Although some of the Brothers did manage to obtain middle class work, they struggled to keep those jobs as they either got laid off or were pressured out believing that they just didn’t fit in the workplace environment- though this is largely in fact due to differences in cultural capital, knowledge, disposition, and skills passed on generationally, that arise from the different upbringings of the supervisors and the Brothers.
To Satisfy the Desires of Women: The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon Linda Gordon uses her book The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction to show racial, gender, class, and religious issues in Arizona during the early 1900s. This novel, at first, seems to be about the orphan train that ran from New York City to Arizona. However, the title is misleading, as it suggests to the reader that the novel is focusing on the orphans. Rather, Gordon uses the orphans as a lens through which one can view the inequalities between the people in Arizona.
Who struggles more in life the rich or poor? The book The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton is about two groups of teenagers the Greasers and the Socs and how they struggle in life. The two informational articles offer facts about how two groups of teenagers struggle in life because wealthy kids have money to pay bills and food as well as feel pressure from their parents’ about school while low income teenagers have to drop out of school to help their families by working to help pay the bills and buy food. Some people believe that the Socs struggled more in The Outsiders because they are rich so everyone thinks they have everything they want, but really they do not have their parents attention, yet that’s really all they want and others believe the Greasers struggled more in The Outsiders because they have no money and have to work for what they want in life. In The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, both the Greasers and the Socs face different struggles in life, however, the Greasers have more difficult lives because they get jumped, lack of money,they get put down by the Socs and have titles over their heads.
There is lower, middle, and upper class, but there are also subcategories that fill the gaps in between, like the impoverished and the top one percenters. “Class in America”, written by Gregory Mantsios, addresses the myths and realities about socioeconomic class in America and how they affect American lives. His article highlights the unequal divide that has persisted over the course of history and will continue to manifest in the future. To introduce the existence of this issue, Mantsios states that this country’s citizens “don’t like to talk about class...or class privileges, or class oppression, or the class nature of society” (Mantsios 378). This is the case in America today because people are neglecting to acknowledge the existence of these elusive
In his story, “A&P”, John Updike shows that sometimes people unhappy with their opportunities judge people based upon their social class causing bad decisions and later disappointment. Updike utilizes symbolism, irony, and characterization to display the impact of a person’s social class on society. The different social classes of people create a barrier between them leading to the desperation of trying to fit on a different level. Social status is the way a person lives their life and the lifestyle they
Thematic Essay- Society and Class Society and class is an important theme in “The Outsiders”, a novel written by S.E Hinton. “The Outsider”, is a book about two gangs, the Greasers and the socs who are rivals because of their economic and social differences. Throughout the book, S.E Hinton outlines that Socs, who have a better economic status are unaware of all of the other aspects in life and feel superior over the Greasers. In book, The Outsiders, it 's shown that a human society can be separated a society because of society and wealth.
The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black.
When students are unaware of the history of social class, they begin to believe false information, such as, poor people deserve to be poor. Loewen does a great job of pointing out student’s misunderstanding of social status and strongly believes that it is the high school text books to
The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.
Social inequality is overlooked by many. It affects so many of us, though we have yet to realize how extreme it is. Lee argues in this novel how much stress social inequalities put on the black and white races throughout the 1930s. Although, social inequalities did not just affect different races, it also affected poor people and family backgrounds. These are proven in the novel multiple times through Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and the Cunninghams when the book is looked at more in
The Social Class in American Television How many times have you seen an American TV series? Have you realized that they show some of the most common situations in the country, like social classes? They make comedy or a drama about it and that is amazing. For example, 2 Broke Girls, Gossip Girl, 90210, and many others. Max and Caroline from the sitcom 2 Broke Girls are the best example for this and we can see how American television shows to the audience differences and similarities between people that were born rich and people who were not.
Hinton, there are several moral values prevailed. This novel never fails to highlight extreme opposite situations of two contrasting social classes and, it is the emphasis of social class issues that inspires us to learn to accept and understanding the differences of people surrounding us. All the discrimination and loathing are utterly gratuitous; they are two of the peace’s greatest foes. Just take the conflict between the Socs and Greasers as an example; because of the contempt they hold towards each other, three deaths are ensued. From the very beginning of the novel, they have already demonstrated their respective dissatisfaction by labelling the West-side wealthy teenagers as the jet set or Socs, the abbreviation for Socials; whereas all boys on the East Side, as greasers.
In the book the Inner Party is able to momentarily turn off the telescreens Big Brother uses to spy on the population with demonstrating the differentiation in social classes. One way this significance of classes is shown in the U.S is how the country is a capitalist society which has always run on people advancing themselves as much as they can. Perhaps inadvertently the American Dream has become a “get rich
Inequality between social classes has been a problem for humanity since social organization exists. The texts “I Am The People, The Mob” by Carl Sandburg and “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” by Nick Hanauer both address an issue about inequality, relevant for each’s author’s context. While “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” expresses a point of view for higher class people and about a modern-day problem, “I Am The People, The Mob” describes a problem in a context of a century before and for a less wealthy class. Text C, “I Am The People, The Mob” is a poem written in 1916, for an audience of people that were not part of the higher social classes but were oppressed by them.
(Lee 269). This shows conflict between classes because white people are giving black people a hard time. Black people were perceived as the lowest class and throughout the story people would treat them as if they were dirt. Being in the lowest class, they would have to do all of the terrible work. They never had a chance to get a good job and be successful because of the white people.