Comparing Communism In Hamlet Fire And The Latehomecomer

When World War II finally came to an end, the United States, and most of the world, was relieved because the Holocaust and the war itself were finally over, and they had new legislations in place to prevent such events from occurring again. The United States also had a new sense of fear following World War II. They were fearful of the spread of communism. This fear of communism was their main focus, so when other situations arose, such as white flight and suburbanization, and the civil rights movement, the government seemed to avoid these events because all they could think about doing was containing the spread of communism. The worlds portrayed in Bryant Simon’s The Hamlet Fire and Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer are both set up by the

With all the money they were making, they “moved their families farther out onto curvy streets in small subdivisions named after plantations, into what passed for Hamlet’s suburbs,” (Simon, The Hamlet Fire, 22). This type of movement of white families was happening in many large cities, most notably in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This movement became known as white flight and led to the suburbanization of cities. Suburbanization led to decreasing tax codes in the urban cities, resulting in the urban areas becoming run down and full of minorities. The minorities became the main workers at low paying jobs in the heart of the urban areas. Because the value of the areas had decreased substantially and because the employers were cheap like the Roes, the workers were paid very little and there was little regulation keeping them safe. As a result of the lack of regulation and lack of investigation from the government because of their focus on containment, fires like the Hamlet fire were inevitable. Containment and suburbanization set the stage for the fire in Hamlet that occurred approximately 45 years