Rich and Poor (Final Exam)

The picture shown below is an important American artifact because it represents how in America, the lifestyle of the upper class comes at the expense of the lower class.  In the left and bottom of the image we see almost entirely dull colors, beige and brown and gray.  To me this makes the homeless man seem to blend in to his surroundings, like he is part of the building and not a living human being.  This man reminded me of the boy in the closet described in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".  It is said that this boy "ocassionally fumbles vaguely with his toes or genital", similarly to how the man in the photo is fumbling "vaguely" with the back of his shirt.  Vague can men not having clear thoughts, which makes it feel like the man and the boy are thought of as animals, like a dog would mindlessly lick himself.

Speaking of the man's shirt, the most striking part of the photo is the contrast between the man's clothing and surroundings and the three brightly dressed women to his left.  These women pop out of the image like the subject of a scene in which the homeless man is just part of the background.  If you were to admire these women's shirts, you may notice that it is "Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly" across the seam, just like the shirt described in Robert Pinskey's poem "Sshhirt".  The word wonderful makes it seem as though it is some kind of unexplainable miracle, or a wonder, that the shirt is so perfect.  Is it really a wonder though?  Later in the poem Pinskey mentions the reality behind the shirt, that it is only possible because of "the sorter/ Sweating at her machine".  Sweating sounds like something unclean to me, and the three women in the image have a clean appearance that makes me doubt they have ever sweated at a machine. However, their clothing shows that they certainly have benefited from the sorters work.  I think that the way these women are able to live, as shown by their clothing, depends wholly on the work of less fortunate people like the sorter.  Just like the rich life and joy of the people of Omelas "depend wholly on [the child in the closet's] abominable misery".  "Abominable" can mean evil, and to me, evil is something that comes from someone, which shows that the people of Omelas are doing an evil onto the boy in the closet, like the workers in clothing factories are forced to do their work because of high class Americans who want to buy cheap shirts.

If the homeless man in the photo is so similar to this fabled boy of Omelas, is there some reason that the lifestyle of the rich in America forces this man into where he is?  Are our lives only possible because of this man's suffering?  In one class discussion that I remember vividly, we talked about how economists agree that an unemployment rate of 0% would not necessarily be a good thing, and the target for the American system to work the best would be about three percent.  A theory Doc Oc proposed was that the three percent was there as incentive to the other 97%, that if they didn't keep working hard and trying to climb the social class ladder, they could fall to being one of the undesirable three percent.  I know I certainly never want to look like that man on the steps.  Whatever the reason, I think this man is one of the three percent that makes life possible for people like the three women.  Mr. B also once blogged about his encounter with a homeless woman at a soup kitchen and recalled her saying "I've had it with America and I'm leaving".  This reminds me of the boy in Omelas begging to be let out of the closet.  The boy and the homeless women and man in the picture and the workers in clothing factories, are really just the background that allows wealthy Americans to live how they do and stand out like the women in this picture.