Hillbilly Essay On Culture Summary

JD Vance; An Ivy League Hillbilly Writing On Culture America began in the late 1700s on the east coast overthrowing a mighty empire that spanned the circumference of the globe. From this a nation was born, and its people with an extreme sense of pride rapidly expanded west, over the Appalachians, across the great pains, and to the west coast, settling everywhere along the way. However, somewhere after the Great Depression in the 1900s the Appalachian region started to lag behind economically. A subset hillbilly culture was born, with that intense American pride and an appalling economic situation. It is in this impoverished backdrop that J.D. Vance writes his memoir and social commentary on hillbilly culture, in which he makes the argument that the hillbilly problem must be solved by a culture change, not by governmental action. He makes this argument semi …show more content…
Vance successfully makes argument about the gravitas of the problem the hillbillies face and how the only solution is a complete change in culture by first establishing his own ethos as a hillbilly. He finds a common place with other hillbilly readers by relaying to how they and their parents struggled paying for Christmas every year. He found common place by showing how his family just like other hillbillies struggled during tax season, specially when their refund was not big enough to pay for their Christmas splurge. He finds common place with other children of hillbillies who had a traumatizing childhood just like he did with very few parental figures. Furthermore, he takes this establishing of ethos and how he relates to the problems or hillbillies when he discusses working with Brian — a poor hillbilly child who recently lost his mother and has a significant lack of parental figures in his life. He uses this established ethos as well as his own story along with Brian’s to establish both the hardship of hillbillies but also their potential to grow and learn like every other child in