Good Example Of Essay On Social Class

Ever since the historic times, there has been an invisible line that has always separated the people based on their social classes. In other words, the people have always been divided into the poor and the rich. In the previous times, they have been captured by various terminologies but in the end, it always was the rich and the poor. In the ancient Rome, the bourgeoisie and the proletarians as they were called were never at peace with each other. Just as Marx and Engels describe the ancient history, “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, baron and serf, guild master and journeyman, oppressor and oppressed, standing constantly in opposition to each other, carried on an uninterrupted warfare.” (127) These two brilliant writers do not forfeit the fact that this warfare between the two social classes was always open even though in the present it has been concealed.
The Manet rag picker picture depicts the proletarians, which is the lower social class of the society. This group of people has always been despised by the bourgeois class due to their inability to help themselves out of their sufferings. The rag picker in this case gives a vivid description of how the proletarians suffered in their everyday lives in order to fend for themselves. This makes them hate the rich who use them to earn money. Marx and Engels further describes that the classes usually clash due to their differences and in the end, the result is either transformation of the whole society revolution-wise or destruction of both the classes. In this case, the proletarians and the bourgeois indulge in conflicts and the two classes end up destroying one another or the situations for the rag pickers worsens.
Charles Baudelaire tries to express the distinction between the social classes that exist within the boundaries of our society today. He creates a vivid description of the life that the rich and the poor go through in the society. For instance, he describes the restaurant, and all its classiness. The persona of the excerpt claims that he was able to see through their eyes and the description he provided was a mere symbol of the distinction between the poor and the rich. “How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! But it is a house where only people who are not like us can go.” (Baudelaire 52) This statement gives the picture of the separation that exists between the poor and the rich, the two social classes that are not in agreement.
The rag picker in the picture is also a vivid description of the lower social class in the society, the poor. The picture depicts that they have rags for clothing, and more or less filthy in nature. Baudelaire also gives a similar description of the poor in the society, “They were in rags.” (Baudelaire 52) In simple terms, Charles explains the poor could not venture into the places the rich are due to their indifferences and in so doing, he vividly creates the image of clashes between the two social classes of people. In so doing, he captures the attitude similar to that of Marx and Engels who denote that the rich and the poor have always been on the negative side of one another. In a nutshell, the society has been and clearly seems to be divided with regards to the social classes.

Works cited

Baudelaire, Charles, and Louise Varèse. Paris Spleen, 1869. New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1970. Print.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Lanham: Start Publishing LLC, 2012. Internet resource.