Upper West Side

speaker. I began lose respect for Spanish speakers after being constantly disrespected for not being fluent in Spanish. Also, in the lecture we learned about the diverse classes of living, S.I.W.M.U., which is: survival, immigrant, working, middle, and upper class. I would consider myself both working class and middle class since I live with my father, who is middle class, but I work a minimum wage job struggling to pay for college tuition and other personal bills. To sum up, I moved to my…

Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir is a film that depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants prior to the beginning of World War II, showing their moral cruelty on the eve of impending destruction. Rules of the Game gives an insight into the history of France and how the difference in social classes made a vast difference in how one was treated and how one was judged or looked upon. Whether the upper classes did something good or bad most of the time they were looked at with…

experienced 1,814, homicides during the year of 1980. This is three times what we are experiencing today. Drugs like crack and cocaine blew up in 1984, and cocaine was available in cities all across New York, especially in Upper Manhattan also known as Washington Heights. Upper Manhattan is mostly populated by Dominican people; these immigrants were willing to do anything and everything to make a living. The MTA(Metropolitan Transportation Authority )consist of 468 stations, and covers about…

In Barbara Ehrenreich’s This is Their Land, she suggests that the middle class is being limited by the unreasonable amount of accumulated debt on when entering the workforce, the irrational cost of living, and the restricted opportunity for higher wages. In recent times, America’s economy has progressively struggled and diminished to the point where other countries no longer consider America the number one economy. In 2008, America’s economy was in a large financial crisis, which resulted in the…

We as people are constantly changing, attempting to find the role our society dictates us to fill. We let our labels define us, allowing us to be tucked away like soup cans into our categories of “male”, “female”, “old money”, “new money”, “working class”, along with hundreds of other labels whose only purpose is to separate us. Our society clings to the belief that this labeling process only exists in tawdry cinematic dramas about high school, but the references are as old as human history. The…

The Neoclassical era gave way to people becoming more literate and comfortable with social norms and started the beginning of a middle class structure. People were more interested in appearances and they are clever, witty and have good manners especially when in public places. Conservatism flourished as the new normal, as well as in politics and literature. During this era, the literature that was written mostly consisted of simple portrayals of human beings. Writers imitated the style of…

Pride and Prejudice is a novel written by Jane Austen. The book portrays the social class at the time and how it affected the people’s lives and their actions. The novel consists of two main characters, Elizabeth and Darcy. During the course of the story, both Elizabeth and Darcy go through changes in the way that the think and act. The author, Jane Austen does this in the hope to send her readers a message through the change between the characters. Throughout the course of the novel Elizabeth…

The upper middle class world I grew up in was vastly different than the working class world that Lynda Barry and Mike Rose’s mother, Rosie grew up in. I had two parents working white collar jobs; my mom a dental hygienist and my dad a mechanical engineer for Verizon Wireless. I went to a public, regional high school with enough funding to not only offer art and music class, but to offer sub categories of art and music, such as mechanical drawing and various different band classes. It is safe to…

Merton. Strain theory suggests that cultures dictate success goals for all citizens (Adler and Adler, 2016: 63). Yet, access to succeed is limited to just the middle and upper classes. This is the idea of rags to riches and everyone wants to be rich and live comfortable. The strain portion is those who are not in the middle to upper classes will not be able to achieve the higher quality of life because of lack of resources. There are several “road blocks” that prevent them from rising within the…

Bicycle Thieves is a 1948 Italian film that follows a poor working-class man named Antonio Ricci. Antonio lives in Rome in the post-World War II era. Antonio, a family man, is desperately looking for a job, like many other men. He is finally offered a position that brings hope to his family which is comprised of his wife Maria, young son Bruno, and his infant baby. The hope of his family is soon diminished when Antonio’s bike was stolen from him on his first day of work. Most of the movie…