Social Inequality In Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains

The concept of social inequality tackles the existence of unequal opportunities for people of different status and positions in the society. While it normal to have a form of stratification in the society, there are situations that remain dire and need urgent intervention to try and bring about a balance. There are various dimensions of social inequality including income, wealth, power, and ethnicity. Social inequality has adverse effects on citizens of a particular nation especially on the quality of life due to unequal access to important social amenities. In Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, the author has a particular focus on several aspects of life in Haiti. While the book covers on several thematic concerns, the issue of social inequality takes a major portion of the author’s attention. Particularly, Mountains Beyond Mountains highlights the economic inequality and disparate provision of healthcare services in Haiti, its impacts on the affected people and the possible solutions to this social inequality.
To begin with,

Farmer asserts that the people who died in Haiti without any form of effective therapy were exclusively “people who lived and died in poverty” (115). The author gives an example of Joseph who was an AIDS victim who narrates about his father’s attempt to get medication. The poor peasant sells all his belonging to pay the healer in a bid to save Joseph’s life (146). Paul Farmer seeks to enhance the living standards of the Haitian people with particular attention to making healthcare services available to the oppressed and vulnerable population of Haiti. He works in a diligent manner to fight for the needs of the poor people of Haiti by arguing against the huge gap between “this world” and the world of Haiti where there is an “accumulation of wealth in one part of the world and abject misery in another” (Kidder