Lower Class Of American Immigrants example essay topic

Though Mohr doesn't expressly say so, I believe it is safe to assume that Mrs. Hamma is a white woman of at least moderate wealth. This immediately alienates her from her students, most of whom are Hispanic, speak poor English, and are doing menial tasks for little pay. In fact, there are only two students in the class of twenty-eight who are from Europe, one Italian and one Polish. Another obvious difference between Mrs. Hamma and most of her students is gender. When she is calling on the students to speak about themselves, the text says, "There were more men than women and Mrs. Hamma called two or three men for each women. It was her way of maintaining a balance".

Much of this story is focused on using education as a means to changing social status. This is a very American idea, the thought that one can change much of their life and lifestyle by educating themselves, getting a higher paying job, and working hard. In Paul Fussel's book Class, he proposes a new sort of class of people, those who don't fit into the nine categories he has discussed previously in the book (top out-of-sight, upper, upper middle, middle, high proletarian, mid-proletarian, low proletarian, destitute, and bottom out-of-sight). This new class he calls "X people" and describes them as curious, creative, talented, irreverent, and self-sufficient. Those who belong to this new class do not care which class one comes from and do not care what others think of them and their relationships with people outside their class. Though Fussel's book was written at around the same time as Mohr's story, it is obvious that Mohr does not believe that this.

Most of his characters are caught in the lower class of American immigrants. The simple fact that for the last 200 years or so, immigrants are almost immediately lumped into the lower class is somewhat hypocritical. America as we know it was founded by immigrants; yet, once these immigrants had been in the country for a couple generations, they begin to forget what it is like to be a immigrant and discriminate against newer migrant families. Even the character in "The English Lesson" who had been a professor in Poland is now under that same discrimination immigrants, and specifically non-English speaking immigrants, are faced with. In his statement about himself, he says, Since four months I am working in large hospital as position of porter in maintenance department. The thing of it is, I wish to take Basic English to improve my knowledge of English language, and be able to return to my position of professor of history of music.

Finally, I wish to become citizen of United States. That is my reasons. I thank you all. Had Mr. Paczkowski come from an English speaking country, he would have had no difficulty finding a position in any university, and while I am not saying that anyone with a degree in another country and no knowledge of English should immediately be given a job, it should be a bit easier than this man is finding it.

I suppose this thought though comes from the idea that if one is educated and works hard, he will succeed. This must be at least part of Mohr's point; that, though education and hard work will help you somewhat, it does not always ensure a paved path to Easy Street. In America, one of the largest classes can be defined by the poor, non-English speaking, migrant worker. No matter how hard these people work, chances are they will always be locked into this class and not even those that fall into Fussel's class of "X People" are going to make a significant change to the limitations that this class places on a person.