ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

For my second major paper, I think I am going to analyze the economic profile of Julius in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. I want to focus on the idea of labour through cheating in this society, mainly analyzing the times when Julius tried to sabotage Debra’s Hall of Presidents.

In the Bitchun society, Whuffie is what determines the type of lifestyle you may have. If you have a lot of Whuffie, you live a life of luxury, being able to have whatever you want and people always looking up to and trying to please you. If you have little to no Whuffie, as what happened to Julius in the middle of the novel, people avoid you and you lose the luxuries. The elevator doesn’t stop for you, you lose your nice room, your girlfriend breaks up with you, strangers on the monorail don’t respect your personal space… This demonstrates Smith’s idea from “Theory of Moral Sentiments”–that people always look to the rich and aim to please the rich, while avoiding the poor and looking down on them. You gain/lose Whuffie through your interactions with people. When people like you and approve of you and your actions/accomplishments, you gain Whuffie. When you lose their respect/approval, you lose Whuffie. Thus in this society, it is really important to gain everyone’s approval and have them think well of you.

Julius seems to be someone who understands we need Whuffie, but does not believe that it is as important as the newer, younger people like Lil believe it is. His motivation to keep Debra away from the Haunted Mansion is not so that he will get all the credit and Whuffie for rehabing it, but more in order to preserve magic of Disney the way it was. He seems to appreciate the history and memory of things, more than the new, advanced high-tech benefits. This even shows with his wanting to keep his memory of the last year rather than lose it all but live healthily again. This is against what the majority of the society values, which is moving forward and constantly advancing. Julius is against Debra’s renovations of the Magic Kingdom and is afraid that she will take control of the rest of the park, making it new and high-tech like the Hall of Presidents. The first time Julius attempts to sabotage Debra’s project, it didn’t work. Instead, he tried to focus on making the Mansion better which works for a while, until he sabotages Debra’s work a second time. Then he got caught for it and everyone looked down on him for doing so. He lost all his Whuffie and Debra gained a lot of sympathy Whuffie. I was going to use this to show that when he cheats, people look down on him for it and everything goes downhill. He (and Debra, but I am using his point of view) is a great example of how cheating does not work in this society because of the Whuffie system. This society strongly supports honest labour.