My Class Change

”With that transaction, it was official. Hepzibah was now part of the working class." I believe that one of the motifs in The House of the Seven Gables was basically how inevitable and yet fickle change is. Class change is probably one of the best examples that exemply the impact and aftermath change can have in a person's lifestyle but also his/her understanding of the world. I saw Kevin wrote a great example showing how profound class change is so I'm just going to quote him.(Hope you don't mind)

"This change is not like the change we all underwent Sunday, August 24-going to bed with your mind in what I like to call it “summer mode” and waking up the next day and having to force your mind to switch to “school mode.”

In summary, we saw how Hepzibah went from being rich to normal. We see how the simple act of forcing a payment led to her worldview basically being flipped upside down and lit on fire.

I specifically chose this quote because it has affected I chose this quote specifically because not only does class change demonstrates the main idea but it has also affected me .

To begin, before I moved to the States, I was pretty much as upper-class you can get. My parents basically didn’t have to do anything. We had servants do all our stuff. Cleaning, cooking, answering the door, getting us a glass of water, driving, etc. At the time, I felt something was off. I chose to sneak out from time to time to give food to the nearby homeless until I was caught. I felt both joy and guilt but overall confusion. Why would my parents for feeding the homeless? I mean, we had plenty of food and no one in my family was going hungry. At the time I just took it that I was young and didn’t know how the world worked. Then in May ’95, my world was flipped over and lit on fire. My mom told me my dad was taking us to America and how great the place is. It would be like Heaven. All I knew about it then was that they had awesome toys. We got there and I was in complete shock. (At the time) My dad put the luggage in the car and drove the car. I had no idea what I was in for. An already long story short, it turned out my “Heaven” happened to a 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Straight ghetto. For the first time in my 7 years I got my own glass of water, saw cockroaches, fist fought, smoked, ran for my life etc. One day I came home with a black eye(I still won). I was pissed off at everything and asked why we were here and why we had to live like this. It didn’t go too well and eventually realized what had happened to my life. I was poor. After that it was Wilmington, Brooklyn with a different flavor. Finally made it to the suburbs. The middle class. No more gun shots, no more fights. But a lot more ignorance.

I would go into more details but I already wrote a lot more than I intended and what you guys want to read so I just shortened everything else into two sentences. My experience has made me a lot more aware of my surroundings and be respectful of what I have and not have compared to others, both more and less fortunate.