"How The Other Half Lives" Response

Response to this NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/magazine/how-the-other-half-lives.html?ref=lives&_r=0

This life piece by Tara Clancy demonstrates the marked difference in social class.  In this nonfiction story, Clancy recounts her childhood experiences with her mother's wealthy boyfriend.  She uses juxtaposition to highlight the stark contrast between her daily life in Queens and the millionaire's Bridgehampton mansion.

This contrast is most clearly explained through the metaphor: "we became superwomen, able to jump social strata in a single bound!" (Clancy).  She uses this technique to emphasize the almost seamless transition between her daily life at school and the jet setting, glamorous world of the man in the pinstripes.

Additionally, the author uses food to differentiate between the two lifestyles.  She describes the transition of returning home after a weekend with the man saying "Dinner went from being leek tarts and foie gras to the Burger King drive-through or homemade pasta e fagioli," (Clancy).  She takes something trite and mundane and utilizes it to add a sense of tone to her piece.  Food is something that everybody partakes in, but nobody thinks much of.  However, when the subject is raised, it is painfully obvious just how different ways of life can be.  Tara Clancy also continues her food motif in her conclusion by stating that "foie gras doesn’t have anything over a good pasta e fagioli" (Clancy).  In this statement n her closing paragraph, she sums up her experience with another way of life, acknowledging it's merits, but remaining loyal to the life she was born and raised into.

The author effectively communicated her story by giving it a clear beginning and ending.  She starts off the article by explaining her mothers brief romance with her father.  She explains that after the divorce, the older woman is hesitant to rush into another serious relationship, thus ending up in an intense, but noncommittal relation with a man who once employed her.  After recalling the saga of their fling, Clancy neatly ties up the loose ends by proclaiming that everything comes to an end, and her mother married a mailman "who grew up around the corner from her in Brooklyn"(Clancy).