Social Status

Analytical Essay # 49105

English > Analysis
Literature > American

Social Status

A look at the issues of social status in Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina".

2,475 words () | 0 sources | 2004 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Allison uses rhetorical strategies to show the danger of classification by social status. It explains how the author discusses social roles as they relate to a child growing up in South Carolina in the 1950s when social roles were much more defined.

From the Paper:

"In this passage Allison shows that the Boatwrights discriminate against others just as they are discriminated against due to social rank. Grey and Earl hate the black children even though they have never talked. The boys take pride in the fact that the black children are afraid of them and that their parents force them to stay inside, so that there will not be trouble among the children. Regardless of the anger they feel when members of society differentiate them, the white trash, from themselves, the wealthy, they in turn do the same thing to black people, who are by race viewed as substandard because solely of their genetic background."