How does Ferlinghetti show difference in American society in his poem "Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes"?

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Steven Robinson 11A2        Mr Portman        Page  of

How does Ferlinghetti show difference in American society in his poem “Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes”?

Ferlinghetti set this poem in San Francisco. This is a busy city filled with people from all sorts of ethnic and social backgrounds. To me this creates the opportunity to show two people of such different statuses in society together. It also gives the author the chance to show the two sets of people together due to circumstance, showing how people are forced to live along side each other regardless of creed.

The poem describes the people at a set of traffic lights, and although the traffic lights are rarely mentioned in the poem they are the basis of the text. It creates the main link between the two ‘garbage men’ and the two ‘beautiful people’. It is one of the few places in today’s society where these two sets of people are linked for so long in their busy lives.

The first people in the poem to be described in detail are the two people in the Mercedes. He is portrayed as an upper class architect and the woman is portrayed as a young woman that would only be with the man because of his social status.

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 After the setting, the first thing mentioned is the vehicles. These show a difference between the two types of people because of the affordability of them. Although both types of people drive vehicles the price of them and the status in society that they bring are very different. The architect drives a Mercedes that, if someone saw it in the street they would automatically assume that it belonged to someone that was wealthy. On the other hand the two bin men are driving a garbage truck, supplied with their work, which people do associate with scavengers and people of the ...

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