Two Scavengers In A Truck: Poverty And Wealth

In a collection of poems: ‘Two scavengers in a Truck, Two beautiful people in a Mercedes’ and ‘Poverty and Wealth’ demonstrates the overall area of study ‘Them and Us’ by displaying differences between social classes and how they contrast between each other. The poem ‘Scavengers in a Truck, Two beautiful people in a Mercedes’ was written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an American poet. It was aimed to the people of America as this poem questions the democracy of the USA with all the disparities between the poor and the wealth. As it can already be predicted from the title of the poem it would be a comparison poem, also from the wording of the title ‘scavengers in a truck’ the word scavenger means an animal that eats rotten food or a person who looks

One of the main techniques used in this poem was Juxtaposition, as this poem is a comparison between the two very different lives of two men, at first it seems that the wealthy man had it all and the man in poverty had nothing, but by the end of the poem it challenges it by showing what the end of their life had in store for them. In the beginning of the poem the millionaire felt blessed to have their own child as it is said in the beginning of the poem “The rich man said ‘my son shall be a Lordly ruler o’er land and sea’ “whereas the man in poverty took it as another mouth to feed and a part of God’s plan for him to have another child “Tis the Good Gods will that I have another mouth to fill” from these two quotes it seems that the wealthy have it better, but the man in poverty defies it. By the end of the rich man’s life, he has led an unpleasant life in this quote “He scoffed at woman, and doubted God, and died like a beast and went back to the sod.” The man in poverty however, being a working class man has fulfilled his life with the quote “The son of the labourer tilled the soil, and thanked God daily for health and toil. He wedded for love in his youthful prime”. At the end of the poem, it asks a rhetorical question which leaves the reader of the poem thinking “Now which of these men was the richer one? Which by the end of the poem the man in poverty was thought of being the ‘richer’ one by the reader as the man in poverty has been happy throughout his life and not necessarily be the ‘rich