n the beginning of the book Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin the author discusses the obstacles she and her husband faced when they were looking for an apartment in the upper class part of Manhattan. While this book setting is from thirteen years ago. The things Martin saw and the people she interacted with are not that different from the way the people of the upper class are acting in the world today. Furthermore, Martin discusses her own upbringing and how she felt during the whole process of her trying to find an apartment. The part of the book I liked reading and found most interesting was when Martin described her own upbringing. I liked this part because it reminded me of when my parents talk about when they were kids and how …show more content…
Furthermore, Martin describe how the people that live in the rich part of manhattan keep themselves isolated from people of different class. My first impression of this book is I find it to be fascinating because nobody really before Martin question how the people that are living in the rich part of Manhattan are acting. Being a person that is from a middle class family and that lives in Brooklyn I can understand why Martin felt the way she did when she was trying to find an apartment. In my point of view if I were to try and get an apartment in these part of Manhattan that Martin described I probably would face the problems that Martin faced. For instance Martin discusses when she first started looking for an apartment and how the broker she talked to asked her multiple question about her job, husband, and upbringing (Martin, 25 ). I found this surprising because what give these people that right to question people when they are trying to find an apartment. Furthermore, the truth of the matter is that the people of the upper class that most of the time live in these places that Martin discuss and they keep themselves separated from the rest of society. In my opinion of the way Martin constructed her anthropological in her memoir
The protagonist, Martin is supportive, old-fashioned, and a hard worker. Firstly, Martin is supportive, “It was hard to believe that your own son was not like you wanted him to be, but Martin thought sadly you couldn’t make him see, if he didn’t feel that way…” (200). Despite his wish for David to grow up and live on a farm, he somewhat accepts David’s wishes with a strong effort and is supportive of David. Secondly, Martin is old-fashioned, “Martin listened with sick wonder to this stranger who had been his son. The city… It’s there the days are the same.” (197). Martin reveals his feelings toward the city and his preference of the farm life rather than the city life. Thirdly, Martin is hard working, “The plowed land was here before us and it will last after us and our hands should be proud to work in it.” (194). Martin works hard like any other farmer, maintaining the farm and livestock everyday despite his old age. Therefore, the protagonist Martin is supportive, old-fashioned, and hard
Class identity and social structure was a big thing in the Roaring 20 's. In the Great Gatsby, Long Island was divided into two to three social classes. There is East and West Egg, and then The Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes were where poor people worked, and where Myrtle, a mistress of Tom Buchanan resides. East and West Egg were where old and new money people are. East Egg residents just made tons of money, but still are looked down upon by West Egg residents. West Egg residents had that money for generations. If West Egg residents want to start a new generation with some other rich partner though, where do they stand? Why are the West Egg residents so looked down upon as well by East Egg?
What were the Hudson Valley rich like? They were made up of two classes of people the Robber Barons and the Mayflower rich. In "The Rich and The Super - Rich" Ferdinand Lundberg writes that the Robber Barons gained their wealth thought crime. He writes "Crime: The Highroad to Wealth. Either sound instinct or certain knowledge led Kefauver, Kennedy, Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan to link notorious under world figures with the business world. For crime is a historically established highroad to American fortune building. If earlier men came into the upper propertied class by means of violent crime, it would seem that later criminal practitioners might be heading toward the same dubious salvation. So assiduously and unscrupulously did the earlier fortune-builders work that one might suppose they believed that in attaining wealth they were attaining eternal life." The Mayflower rich considered themselves the true Americans since their families history could be traced all the way back the first Dutch settlers who settled in the Hudson Valley area. They did not accept the Robber Barons with open arms until their fortunes over powered the Mayflower rich in comparison. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and believe it to be one of the best books I have ever read. It was extremely well written and challenging for me to understand at times. It conveys that dark side of human ambition very well, and it has given me much to think about.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
Gentrification is the keystone for the progression of the basic standards of living in urban environments. A prerequisite for the advancement of urban areas is an improvement of housing, dining, and general social services. One of the most revered and illustrious examples of gentrification in an urban setting is New York City. New York City’s gentrification projects are seen as a model for gentrification for not only America, but also the rest of the world. Gentrification in an urban setting is much more complex and has deeper ramifications than seen at face value. With changes in housing, modifications to the quality of life in the surrounding area must be considered as well. Constant lifestyle changes in a community can push out life-time
This book was a good read for me, but I also read book reviews to help me keep track on what I am reading. These book reviews just made a better understanding of what I was reading.
For example, Dally is one of the poor greasers from the east side of the city, and Bob is a very rich Soc from the west side of the city. Dally, being a greaser from the east side of the city, has very little material wealth. Ponyboy states about all the greasers, “We’re poorer than the Socs and the middle class” (3). What little money Dally has he earns riding in local rodeos. He does not even own a car, but borrows Buck Merill’s when he needs one. In fact, Dally does not even have a permanent home. Ponyboy states that Dally “lived anywhere he could” (105). Therefore, Dally is an underprivileged greaser with little money and few possessions. On the contrary, Bob Sheldon is one of the extremely rich Socs from the west side of the city. Bob has no reason to work because everything he wants is handed to him by his affluent parents. Ponyboy describes the Socs, Bob’s click, as “the jet set, the West-side rich kids” (2). The Socs all seem to drive around in expensive sports cars and wear costly madras clothing, and Bob is no exception. Randy states that Bob’s parents “‘spoiled him rotten’” (116). Unlike Dally, Bob has everything he wants. Money and material things are not a concern. Clearly, financial circumstances set these two
was appealing because in the city there was new technology available, but the increasing migration to the cities caused extreme poverty for families in the city and forced the wealthy to move. The large surplus of people into the city led to “the prodigious increase of the tenement-house population,” or the increasingly amount of people who lived in the dumbbell tenements (Riis 275). The dumbbell tenements were hardly a solution to the growing problem of people because they could, though not comfortably, accommodate an entire family in one room for a cheap price. The poor people who lived in the tenements were typically the families who needed to have all members, women and children alike, working to have the money they needed to live. In contrast to the poor, the wealthy people began to strongly dislike the growing population of poor in the beautiful cities, so the solution to their problems was to escape the stench that was the city and move to suburban areas just outside of the city. Many people saw the chance to be “commuters, [or] those who lived in the suburbs and traveled in and out of the city for work,” and they “began to increase in number” (American Memory Timeline). The wealthier people could to use their fortunes to leave the cities and live just outside of them, but they were still capable of commuting to the cities for work and leisure. Urbanization to the cities made for an overly-packed place for a family home, but it was the only place the poor could afford to live, unlike the rich who moved to suburban areas around the
One of the most detailed descriptions of living conditions in Harlem comes early in the novel. In chapter four, Jackson links up with Goldy and together begin to walk to Goldy’s “office space.” Their path takes them to the junction of 7th Avenue and 125th Street. Here the
In Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the city of New York possesses a “transitory” and “enchanted” quantity, which “for the last time in history” rivaled man's “capacity for wonder” (182). New York City, a symbol of American greatness and the American dream, contains very unamerican class distinction: those whose families have been prominent and rich for decades function as a de facto aristocracy, looking down upon and controlling (through vast wealth) the poor. These class distinctions are mirrored by geography, dividing up the maps into regions by wealth. The parallelism of the region and the residents results in the region symbolizing the residents. Through analyzing both the residents and the description of the region, a holistic understanding can be gained about the residents of Valley of Ashes, East Egg, and West Egg.
...Avenue and east of 3rd Street. I knew a guy who lived in that area forty years ago, a little east in Fishtown. He was trying to get the hell out back then. Today it's a "mixed use," gentrified neighborhood, made up of refurbished row-homes, old warehouses, and new town-homes. Its blue-collar residents have been replaced by artists and professionals attracted to its location near center city and more affordable real estate. I checked out the available home prices on Trulia, and realized I'm about 15 years too late. Today the average home is going for $400,000 to $500,00 dollars. Being I can't afford to live in places like Morristown and Haddonfield where the New Jersey Supreme Court judges reside, I'll have to kick back, grab a beer, and hang in the 'hood with my homies until I hit the lottery.
Although West Egg is for the wealthy, they are not viewed as highly as the people from East Egg, this is shown when Nick states, “I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two”. The people from West Egg look up to the people from East Egg, this is because even though the people from East Egg might be arrogant, they still have contacts through the social ladder. The people from East Egg are normally, polite and suck ups because they are interested in being socially
Another one of my favorite aspects of New York life is the inclusive mindset of a lot the city's inhabitants. One of the first things I noticed about the city was the mixture of different people from all walks of life. People of different races, ethnicities, languages, religions, countries, and backgrounds all come together in one iconic city. The idea of diversity and acceptance amongst all people factors into why I love New York City. I would love to meet and work with all different types of people, opening my eyes to things I never knew