Summary: 'Ugliness In Its Entirety'

Eduardo Arvizu
Christina McGee
AP Language and Composition P.1
September 15, 2014
Poverty and Wealth: The Ugliness in its Entirety There is a distinguishable difference in today’s society with the rich and the poor, especially with children between infantry and young adulthood. Of course, there will be differences in their lifestyles after the age of 18, but usually the psychological character of a person is developed in their childhood. Three categories that can be separated between the rich and the poor are the different lifestyles from marriage, materialistic pleasures, and the development of an individual character. Another category is the different education received from a rich child to a poor child usually being that the poor
child will not be at the same level of academics as the rich child. The last category is the cruel difference in law enforcement and how a rich individual can be treated/freed a lot easier than a poor individual. People who have the capabilities to have huge mansions, fancy cars, and astonishing parties are most likely to be very rich. Those people are the ones who buy things with no purpose to them, they buy it because they thought they needed it but in reality they are just accumulation useless stuff.
Tracy Chapman herself said “sweet lazy life, champagne and caviar… consume more than you need” Tray chapman- Mountain O’ Things she says what she thinks it would be like to be rich and others think it is different from that. The poor people on the other hand are barely able to afford the things they need to survive like food, shelter, and a working plumbing system. Another thing that rich people can do is throw huge private weddings where millions are spent on having that perfect day with that perfect person to spend the rest of your life with, along with a very expensive wedding gown and a professionally tailored suit you can expect only the richest to be able to afford that type of lifestyle,
Edwin Robinson in Richard Cory states “and he was rich- richer than a king”- Edwin Robinson 12/22/1897-4/6/1935. Being rich comes with a lot of things like everyone wanting to be your friend, parties, girls and all the publicity you get for being rich. Whereas the poor have a very limited budget and cannot afford all those luxuries like a nice suit and an expensive gown, they are simply forced to keep it simple and have a small party afterwards. But the poor have traditional values which in the long run lead to longer lasting marriages. Benjamin Karney himself states that “different income groups do not hold dramatically different views about marriage and divorce and when they are different they are different in the opposite direction, from what is commonly assumed… people of low income hold more traditional values about marriage and divorce.” When a family has a lower income they have more to hold on to as opposed to the rich who get divorced for money. Dropout rates of 16 to 24-years-old students who come from low income families are five times more likely to drop out than those from families with higher incomes.
Poor families who have children when they grow up they are more likely to drop out of college because the children have to work and the children do not want to see their parents become more in debt so they drop out to be able to increase their income. The rich on the other hand before their children are even born they already have their college paid for and everything they need in life at their fingertips. Those poor people who are fortunate enough to get a decent education often do not understand the material they are learning and cannot afford to get extra help because their guardian has to work late. But the rich have private tutors who are paid well because of the rich parents and have all the information they need in their fingers all it takes is dialing seven numbers. Even if the rich don’t have private tutors they most likely have a laptop to access the information, as opposed to the poor who cannot afford those
things. When you are rich you have the ability to buy a high tech security system that allows you to have peace of mind all the time. Whereas the poor the only probable security they have is a baseball bat under their bed, but as soon as everyone leaves they are highly prone to get robbed, the robber didn’t take that much physically but he took everything that family had mentally. The only bat thy had under their bed later becomes nothing because the robber or robbers have firearms and life for that family could end because they are not able to afford anything fancy like the rich, who not only have a high tech security system they also have firearms and a lot of security and insurance. Finally being poor: people don’t choose it they are just stuck with it and they have to live it because they have no other choice. And the rich are put under some sort of stress but, they do not have to worry about anything financially. Although the poor do have their own type of richness with their strong families and the love they share.

Works Cited
"11 Facts About High School Dropout Rates." DoSomething.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
Chapman, Tracy. Tracy Chapman. Elektra, 1988. CD
Robinson, Edwin A. Richard Cory. 1897.