Analyse af J.D. Vances 'Hillbilly Elegy'

Hillbilly Elegy. A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Resume:

J.D. Vance begins by talking about that he finds the existence of his own book strange, because he might be considered too young to write a memoir and has not done anything exceptionally good, in his life. Vance talks about graduating from Yale Law School, which is as an amazing achievement because he comes from a family in a poor former industrial town in Ohio. He mentions one of his parents struggling with addiction and then he would be raised by his grandparents. He explains that, according to some statistics, children like him often grow up to become adults who struggle. He recounts how he was on the path to a disasters future until he was rescued by people who loved him and went on to become an Ivy League graduate with a good job.

Essay:

According to J.D. Vance’s arguments in the introduction to his own book “Hillbilly Elegy. A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”, the possibility of living out the American Dream in the US today is limited for the potential working class. This situation is triggered by some factors such as economy, culture, and the individual’s own attitude. First, the American white working class has been struggling some with economic insecurity because “manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees” (ll. 80-81). Furthermore, according to studies, “upward mobility fell off in the 1970s and never really recovered” (ll. 102- 100). This implies to the economy of the US makes it hard for white working-class people to find jobs and have a stable income that, in turn, can help them overcome their social and economic status. Another factor that the text suggests makes the American Dream hard to achieve today is a culture of poverty that has been perpetuated from one generation to the next in white working-class communities. As Vance puts it, “poverty is the family tradition” (l. 37) of white working-class Americans who descend from Irish or Scottish immigrants. Very few of these people have achieved upward mobility throughout history.