ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

For my essay, I will address the issue of value in money and how money is valued in different ways. I think to answer, “what makes money challenging to use?,” I would use Gertrude Stein’s, “Money,” because it established that money has different interpretations for different people. To the normal, working class, money is truly money. Money is something that has value. It is something that we earn to make a living and to basically, survive in this world. “When you earn money, and spend money every day anybody can know the difference between a million and three….” Those who votes public money thinks differently. “Anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money.” That is evidence that money is difficult to use because what you think money is, may or may not differ from my view on money.

I am contemplating which I should use: Locke’s work or Adam Smith’s work. Both address the issue of labour and how labour has value. In Locke’s work, money is a tangible thing that doesn’t go to waste.  I just think it is appropriate to use either Locke or Smith’s texts to support that money has value but people have different views of value so that is why money is a challenge to use.

However, since I am going to use “value,” I want to use Swift’s poem to support that people view value differently. Yet, then I would have to tie in that idea with money. So I may or may not use that poem.

I don’t have a clear, concrete idea of what I’m going to do with the essay and I’ll probably change my initial approach.