Do Students Study for Money?


In Song of Solomon, it is apparent that the main character Milkman longs for freedom, and he asked his father Macon for money, as he believed it would lead him to freedom. However, readers are led to believe otherwise, as while Milkman and Guitar planned to steal Pilate’s gold, they encountered a white peacock with a beautiful tail but couldn’t fly. Guitar said the bird’s inability was due to it having “Too much tail [and how all] that jewelry weighs it down [like] vanity” (Morrison 179). It can easily be seen that this white peacock’s tail serves as a symbol for wealth, which does not always bring one happiness, but rather confinement. This common theme of wealth has been explored in other stories we have read so far, probably most obvious in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” where characters were led towards corruption or even death by their ambition for materialistic wealth.

In present times, “money does not bring happiness” seems to be a commonly acknowledged idea; each generation’s strive for wealth, on the other hand, is shown to have increased over the years by studies on college students. The British Psychology Society highlighted a research which concluded that between the years 1971 and 2014, college students are now more motivated by materialistic reasons versus educational ones. One reason for this can be that while costs for attending a university are becoming relatively higher each year, college degrees are becoming more common and less valued within society. It would make sense that this is causing students to be more concerned with how much they earn after college to pay back their student loans, instead of studying a subject that they would truly enjoy.


This makes me wonder about many teenagers’ college ambitions these days - including my own. Of course, I do think that most of us truly have a subject of interest and genuinely want to pursue careers of a certain direction. However, sometimes I think of Gatsby’s love for Daisy, as well as subtle details hinting that he possibly first fell in love with Daisy not because of who she was, but because of the wealth of her family and the future opportunities she represented. Whenever I think of these ideas, I begin thinking about my own dream, and I wonder if maybe, maybe that dream is not only based off of my own passions, but also due to the “Life, safety, and luxury” it seems to offer for my future(170).

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 19, 2017 at 9:03 PM

    I completely agree. If it were not my motivation for safety and luxury, I wouldn't go to college. I'm not sure if I would even be in school. I would probably be spending my days playing with my friends and living life. Yet I know that if I were to do that, I would be letting my parents down. I would be letting my future children/wife down. If part of my dream is to make my parents happy while living life, I guess I just have to endure through college life. :3

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