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Theme Of Wealth Disparity In Song Of Solomon And In Ron Rash

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In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and in Ron Rash’s short stories Blackberries In June and Speckled Trout, there are themes of wealth disparity and how it affects people. More specifically, most of the characters can be divided up into two groups; those who are wealthy and those who are not. Poorer individuals tend to view those who are wealthy as arrogant, out of touch or greedy. However, they also aspire to become rich themselves or at least be perceived as such.
In Song of Solomon, Macon Jr. is a character who is wealthy by being a landlord. He collects rent from several tenants including Mrs. Bains and Henry Porter. These two tenants in particular are not wealthy and see Macon as cold-hearted. When Henry Porter was drunk and talking about …show more content…

He discusses the situation with Guitar and they fantasize what they would do with the gold. Guitar is deciding between helping his family or fulfilling his goal in the Seven Days. Milkman wants to use the gold to just leave the city altogether. Guitar is not greedy since he does not have much money and would use the money towards either helping his family survive or fulfilling his personal goals. Milkman, on the other hand, has grown tired of the city he is in and simply sees this as his opportunity to escape. Along with being greedy, he is also arrogant and sees himself as above others. He was in a relationship with Hagar for fourteen years. Eventually, he grew bored of the relationship and wrote a letter to her renouncing it. If he was not arrogant, he should have gone about this a different way, such as actually talking to her instead of coldly sending her a letter as if the relationship was a business transaction. Since he did break up via letter, this demonstrates his arrogant belief that he doesn’t need to be concerned with other’s feelings. His narcissism does not only extend to Hagar; Guitar experienced first-hand his belief that other’s concerns should not be put above his own. When Guitar was talking about the murder of Emmett Till, Milkman tried cast Till’s murder and his own disgust with his father as being equal. Guitar catches this and points it out to Milkman. Milkman said “‘Yeah, well, fuck …show more content…

She previously only made jealous comments about the wealth disparity, but now was trying to force them to give them money which would require them to sell the house and get another job. Linda and her mother state that life is disappointing and opportunities that arise do not last long. This further enforces that they see Matt and Jamie as being out of touch since they, especially Matt, do not hold that view. They worked hard for their money and their house and do not want to give that up because of other’s poor financial

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