The Belly Of Paris And A Moveable Feast

Paris as we know it today is an amazing city of lights, love, and beautiful sights and sounds. It is a city that is bursting with energy and amazing experiences for anyone and everyone. In order to achieve this dreamy reputation, Paris has greatly evolved over the past centuries into what we know it as today. Through the countless works of famous writers and artists, audiences are able to view Paris and its beautiful transitions throughout time. The Belly of Paris, which was written by Emile Zola, explores the city in the mid to late 1800s, and A Moveable Feast, which was written by Ernest Hemingway, describes Paris in the roaring 1920s. Both illustrate what the city was like during these times. There are many changes that occur in the city …show more content…
Paris has been a city for the working and poor, and it has also been a city for the glamorous and wealthy. It has also been poverty-stricken and filthy, but it later became extremely clean and beautiful. The evolution of the overall environment and has been slow, but truly remarkable, and the popular opinion of the city has developed over time into a great one. In The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola, the city is portrayed as extremely unpleasant and disgusting. It is described that whenever one of the main characters, Madame Francois talked about Paris, “she spoke in a tone of ironic disdain and referred to the city as if it were some ridiculous, contemptible, faraway place, where she deigned to set foot only at night-time” (Zola 15). The upsetting part about this, is that most people viewed Paris just as Madame Francois does. It was filthy, smelly, and a home to the poor, and in the 1800s, Paris was in a time of recovery from past events like streets filled with garbage and human waste as well as most people living without running water for bathing themselves. In Ernest Hemingway’s book of memoirs A Moveable Feast, he describes Paris as a content and upwardly beautiful place to be. He expresses the importance of cafes during this time, and he describes Parisian lifestyle: “We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other” (Hemingway 43). In …show more content…
A large aspect of society that was and still is extremely relevant, is money, and the attributes that reveal how much money one has. In the 1800s, one way to show off how privileged you were was if you were fat. This would prove to people that you had enough money to buy good food and stay healthy. In The Belly of Paris, Zola describes the leading character, Florent: “No, hunger had never left him. He wracked his brains, but could not recall a single moment when his stomach had felt full. He had become dry and withered; his stomach seemed to have shrunk; his skin clung to his bones” (Zola 12). There was quite a large divide between the fat and the thin, and it was extremely frowned upon if you were thin, because this lead to the assumption that you were poor and could not afford to eat. Contrary to this, views on the “fat vs. thin” debate changed drastically by the 1900s. Hemingway describes that it was better to be thin in A Moveable Feast. “It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending. Especially if you buy pictures instead of clothes. But then we did not think ever of ourselves as poor. We did not accept it. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich” (Hemingway 43). It is here that Hemingway completely glamorizes the poor. In contrast