Ashes and Millionaires
One of the striking features of the setting Fitzgerald created in The Great Gatsby is the side-by-side proximity of the fantastic wealth of East and West Egg and the grim working world of the Valley of Ashes. In fact, Fitzgerald's original title for the novel was Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires.
The title would be appropriate. In a column in Sojourners magazine, college senior Claire Shalinsky argued that at its heart, this is a novel about poverty. Gatsby's ultimate failure, Shalinsky argues, shows that "the persistent presence of poverty threatens to undermine the very ideologies upon which America is founded." The problem of poverty--and its ironic existence alongside wealth and privilege--has never been greater in America than it is today. Watch this video about displaced schoolchildren living in motels in the shadow of the happiest Place on Earth. Looking at Poverty--And at Wealth
Poverty is both a national problem and a local problem. In an October 2014 Herald Times article about daily life behind the scenes at Bloomington North, cafeteria director Mari Bolin noted that students who get free and reduced-price lunches eat a lot more on Mondays and Fridays. She said the effect is even more notable near holiday breaks: "You can count on having them eat everything under the sun on a holiday." Consider what this means about the lives being led by students around us. How many of us might have stories just like the families in the video? This report from WFIU, Bloomington's public radio station, is another reminder that poverty is not just something that happens somewhere else, and that it happens to real, individual people, not just to stereotypes. To end our Ash Heaps and Millionaires unit, we will be looking more closely at sources like these that speak about poverty, and also about wealth, in America. The Google Drive folder on the next page contains sources and information that you will be consulting as you prepare a synthesis essay about wealth and poverty. |