Poverty Depicted in Literature

Overview

The phenomenon of poverty has been depicted in writing for centuries, including in works that have had a deep influence on Western literature, such as the Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare. Yet poverty itself is relatively rarely considered the main theme of a literary work. Instead, it is usually treated as a subtheme which arises from the fact that a main character or group in the work is poor. In this contextual role it may serve as a cause or effect of a more central theme or themes. For example, a work that deals with an abusive family may emphasize the family's economic condition only to show a factor behind the abusive behavior. In this way literary representations of poverty reflect the real life complexity of the condition, which is often deeply connected to other issues such as race, political power, education, and environment.

In North American literature in particular, poverty rarely appears as a significant literary theme before the late nineteenth century. This may be at least partially the result of the fact that before major urbanization caused by the industrial revolution, poverty was not a major social or political issue, even though it was present. Another contributing factor to this absence before the late 1800s may be that most early American writers were of the higher classes, writing as a supplement to or a diversion from their careers. As economic and societal change occurred poverty earned greater attention both in society in general and in literature.

Although all poor people share common characteristics—specifically a lack of money and resources, which may result in insufficient food, clothes, and shelter, and an identity of a social outcast—it is still difficult to make generalizations when dealing with the theme in literature. This is due to the many different experiences of poverty and the ways in which they are portrayed in literary works. Perhaps the most common way critics have categorized poverty narratives is along ethnic lines (despite Marxist theorists and others raising issues with such a practice). Often, the state of poor African Americans is shown to be the result of years of slavery and then continued oppression and lack of opportunity. Latino literature, too, tends to focus on racism and systematic discrimination as the main root of poverty. The condition of impoverished Native Americans is typically grounded in the invasion of the Europeans and their progressive campaigns to relocate Native Americans to reservations of barren land. When poor whites are portrayed in literature, they are often characterized as victims of environmental conditions such as drought or of some kind of physical or mental impairment. Less nuanced depictions of poverty—especially in older literature—tend to portray the poor simply as lazy, regardless of ethnicity.

Poverty in African American Literature

Many African American writers address the issue of poverty in their works, usually as a subtheme. In A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich (1973), Alice Childress uses her main character, Benjie Johnson, to show that a major cause of the behavior of delinquent young black men is the environment in which they live. Benjie is a thirteen-year-old heroin addict who lives in a drug-infested poor neighborhood in New York City. He is eventually given an opportunity to get treatment for his problem, but it is unclear whether he accepts the help.

The acclaimed novels of Toni Morrison often show poverty among African Americans as a deep-rooted cycle driven by external forces. In The Bluest Eye (1970), for example, she tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old African American girl who becomes pregnant when her father rapes her. The Breedloves are an impoverished family living in a converted store with beaverboard panels serving as interior walls. Both parents work hard, but they are still unable to sufficiently provide for their family. As a result of their frustration with the white world they live in, they are violent toward each other and toward their children.

Both of these novels identify the leading cause of their African American characters' unfortunate situations to be the history of oppression and domination by the whites, coupled with a cycle of self-degradation and frustration on the part of the black community itself, which is a direct result of the oppression and lack of opportunity. These two things lead to a tone of hopelessness and uncertainty as to whether the characters will be able to endure. In Childress' works especially, the reader is left wondering if the African American characters will be able to break out of their poverty and yet retain their identity. The Bluest Eye also addresses a related tension, which is common in literature about poor African Americans, of a conflict between the African Americans' desire to raise their standard of living and a revulsion felt for the values and beliefs of the white-dominated society that they seemingly must embrace in order to accomplish this goal.

Similar themes continued to appear in African American fiction into the early twenty-first century. One author who earned much critical acclaim for probing black poverty was Jesmyn Ward, who was awarded National Book Awards for both her novels Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). The former examines the fine line between working-class and outright poverty in the face of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, while the latter depicts issues such as drug abuse and family ties in an impoverished Southern setting.

Poverty in American Indian Literature

As in African American literature, poverty is often a subtheme in Native American literature. Although perhaps the most common theme in literary works which have American Indians as their main characters is a search for identity, many of these characters are destitute. Often, these characters are in conflict because they realize that if they fully embrace their traditional culture, they will not be able to survive economically—neither as individuals nor as a group. Some works resolve this problem by the characters' recognizing and remembering their culture through the practice of rituals while at the same time learning about and accepting enough of the white world around them to preserve their economic stability.

Ceremony (1977), by Leslie Marmon Silko, shows this resolution through the mixed-breed cattle that the protagonist, Tayo, of mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo heritage, is able to retrieve from the white rancher who stole them. Tayo's family is suffering from the effects of a drought that plagues their land. They lost their cattle while Tayo was away fighting in World War II. The drought and the lost cattle cause the family to be in a precarious economic state, which is worsened by Tayo's battle fatigue and his initial inability to work on the ranch. The novel ends on a hopeful note, however, as Tayo brings the cattle home and is thus accepted by his family and tribe. The cattle are a mix between the marketable European Holstein and a Mexican breed recognized for its ability to run great distances to find water, so the herd offers Tayo's family a definite chance at financial independence.

Acclaimed author Louise Erdrich also often wrote about Native Americans who decide to accept a mix of cultures in order to improve their life situations. Tracks (1988) portrays members of the Anishinabe tribe in absolute poverty, struggling to survive as the whites strip their land away from them. They live in cabins with dirt floors, sometimes with no fuel to heat their dwellings, and never enough food. They struggle to raise their children and keep their elders alive throughout the harsh winters. When the white-owned lumber company finally comes to destroy her land, Fleur Pillager sends her daughter, Lulu, away to a government school and (unsuccessfully) fights back. It is only when Nanapush, Fleur's "uncle," decides to serve on the tribal council (run by whites) that he is able to retrieve Lulu and thus preserve their family unit.

Erdrich's novel is not as neatly resolved as Silko's, however, since the Anishinabe are still quite poor, and they do not get their land back, either. The near-complete hopelessness about poverty found in some African American literature is not present, however. Lulu seems to live at least part of her adult life in the "white world," and she does not seem to be as poor as her parents and grandparents are. There also seems to be hope that she will be able to remain comfortable and yet come to know and accept her traditional heritage.

A more humorous but no less affecting view of American Indian poverty is presented in the novellas by Jim Harrison collected in the volume Brown Dog (2013). These stories focus on the title character, better known as B. D., who ekes out a hardscrabble life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While the plots are driven by all manner of zany adventures, they are all linked by B. D.'s vivid experience of poverty, which humanizes but does not sentimentalize a sometimes larger-than-life character.

Poverty in Latino Literature

The late twentieth century saw a flourishing of literature by Americans of Latin or Hispanic backgrounds. Many of the most acclaimed works of Latino literature from this period dealt with life as a member of a visible minority that often struggled economically. Many coming-of-age stories showcase the complex challenges of growing up with little money and also facing widespread racial barriers, a prime example being The House On Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros. That novel follows protagonist Esperanza as she navigates life in Chicago, where her family has finally settled in a cramped house after moving from apartment to apartment. Her experiences humanize the experience of working-class urban immigrant life while detailing the additional, intertwined challenges that low-income status and racial discrimination impose.

A twenty-first century literary example of low-income Latino communities is presented by Junot Díaz in the short story collection This Is How You Lose Her (2012). Featuring the same protagonist, Yunior, as Díaz's acclaimed novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), the stories most centrally focus on themes of love and relationships. Yet poverty or near-poverty is a key background element, intertwining with the characters' experiences of immigration, assimilation, family, and prejudice.

White Poverty in American Literature

Historically, American literature rarely featured poor whites as main characters. When white characters were poor, they were often portrayed as either able to live a happy life in spite of their circumstances, or as only temporarily poor and on their way to a better life. If neither of these two resolutions was present, then the character was often either mentally ill or simply unintelligent, and thus lacking the necessary resources to rise above adversity. However, by the mid-twentieth century more nuanced depictions of white experiences of poverty emerged.

Quite possibly the most recognized writer of stories about poor whites is John Steinbeck. His white characters are generally poor as a result of the Great Depression and are shown to retain their dignity and humanity in spite of, or perhaps even because of, their low socioeconomic status. His novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), for instance, relates the story of a family forced to move from their farm and migrate westward during a drought in the Midwest. Controversial at the time of publication, it presents a moral message of common people fighting against the oppression of the rich and powerful, and remains a widely taught classic.

The novel Cannery Row (1945), also by Steinbeck, is set after the Depression, and it describes a small fishing community in California. The people in this novel are poor, but they are also happy, for the most part. The men who live in the Palace Flophouse are lazy and satisfied with their lives of inactivity, and Doc, a marine biologist, seemingly enjoys the freedom his profession affords him, even if he could not be considered wealthy. Even the prostitutes are apparently happy because their madam treats them with respect. One of Steinbeck's major accomplishments in this and other works was humanizing poor communities and individuals, who in earlier literature were typically one-dimensional and viewed in a negative of patronizing light.

The novel These Thousand Hills (1956) by A. B. Guthrie Jr., is set much earlier, in the late 1880s, but the issue of poverty is treated in a similar fashion. Lat Evans is born to a poor white family in Oregon, but through careful saving and some luck, he is able to work his way up to becoming a successful rancher and civic leader in Montana. Although his initial embarrassment over his early poverty causes him to reject his family and friends when he becomes wealthy, eventually Lat repents and is able to be happy as well as rich.

In much classic literature about poor whites, there is little confrontation of racial oppression because these characters are for the most part free from this issue. For this reason, many early works about poor whites—even if the characters' problems are not fully resolved—end on an upbeat note. There is hope for these characters as long as they are willing and able to work, even if they must battle the rich and powerful. Yet later writers tended to more deeply explore the conflict inherent in poor people who are both part of the dominant (white) culture and yet economically marginalized. Issues such as racial resentment, drug abuse (especially amid the opioid crisis), and domestic abuse became common themes. This was arguably most apparent in works set in rural Appalachia, the Midwest Rust Belt, and other settings in which white communities felt the economic strains of declining industry in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Notable examples include the novels Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) and Cavedweller (1998) by Dorothy Allison, the novel Winter's Bone (2006) by Daniel Woodrell (also adapted into an acclaimed 2010 film), and the fiction and essays of Ann Pancake. While many of these works carried on Steinbeck's legacy of portraying poverty as a result of large-scale external forces, J. D. Vance earned both acclaim and controversy for returning to ideas of poverty as a result of a lack of work ethic and other individual and cultural choices in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

Bibliography

Aberbach, David. Literature and Poverty: From the Hebrew Bible to the Second World War. Routledge, 2019.

Aziz, Seemi. "Poverty Representations in Children's Literature." Worlds of Words, University of Arizona, 5 June 2017, wowlit.org/blog/2017/06/05/poverty-representations-childrens-literature/. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.

Cook, Sylvia Jenkins. Erskine Caldwell and the Fiction of Poverty: The Flesh of the Spirit. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. Examines the literary career of the Southern writer Erskine Caldwell and his works about the poor.

Clark, Anna. "The Heirs of Steinbeck: Who Are the Fiction Writers Taking On Poverty and Inequality Today?" Pacific Standard, 14 June 2017, psmag.com/social-justice/heirs-steinbeck-fiction-writers-taking-poverty-inequality-today-77452. Accessed 29 Aug. 2019.

Dee, Ruby. "Black Family Search for Identity." In Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, edited by Nellie Y. McKay. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Speaks of Morrison's insistence on showing how her characters came to the situations they are in.

Ford, Thomas W. "The Novels: The Way West and These One Thousand Hills." In A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Thorough discussion of both novels, including attention to Guthrie's focus on the living conditions and progress toward success of his characters.

Johnson, Charles S. Backgrounds to Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1943. Covers the history of racial segregation in the United States. Helpful in understanding attitudes expressed by African American literary characters and authors.

Rimstead, Roxanne. Remnants of Nation: On Poverty Narratives by Women. U of Toronto P, 2001.

Robertson, Sarah. Poverty Politics: Poor Whites in Contemporary Southern Writing. UP of Mississippi, 2019.

Simmons, David. American Horror Fiction and Class: From Poe to Twilight. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Timmerman, John H. "The Wine of God's Wrath." In John Steinbeck's Fiction: The Aesthetics of the Road Taken. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Section 2 focuses primarily on the background conflict of rich versus poor.