The Trauma Of Poverty As Social Identity Analysis

Poverty is a lot more than just not having enough money to afford basic necessities, poverty takes over the lives of those who experience and leaves them with lasting trauma. Poverty deprives people of life and opportunity, it strips them of social acceptance, and fills people with humiliation. The lives of the impoverished are no lives at all filled with layers of traumatic experiences so much so that poverty becomes a part of their identities. In articles like The Trauma of Poverty as Social Identity by Nancy Hudson and What Makes You Think I’m Poor? and in books like Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the way that poverty affects the mental wellbeing of people are clearly highlighted and emphasized. Those in poverty must suffer the alienation, desperation, and the several …show more content…
Not having the same things as everyone else can make people feel insecure about themselves and give them a feeling of “missing out” because they don’t get to experience things and life the same way as others do. Hudson talks about her feelings of alienation when she says “This social rejection made me feel “Othered”, like I didn’t belong. I longed to be like them and to be liked by them.” (Hudson 117) All humans really want to be is accepted so to be deprived of this aspect of human can traumatize a person, especially a young child. Being alienated because of poverty caused her circumstance to become a part of her identity because she was now associated with being impoverished and like most living in poverty, poverty was a part of them. Poverty’s alienation is also shown in Of Mice and Men where during the Great Depression most people worked alone because the poor were isolated from society and had nowhere to go, which is why George and Lennie's relationship was viewed as so strange because most poor and homeless men did not have