Themes of Self-Sabotage Within Hillbilly Elegy Anonymous 11th Grade

In J.D Vance’s wildly-popular 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Vance recounts his childhood experience of Appalachian poverty and makes a sociological argument against government handouts. Speaking from personal exposure to Appalachian poverty, drug-abuse, and crime, Vance expresses his frustration with what he sees as a culture of indolence among Appalachia's nonworking poor. Vance’s argument that unemployment benefits disincentivize hard work and hinder upward social mobility is clearly conservative. But it is not built upon the common conservative “bad-seed” narrative, which demonizes the unemployed individual and presents their faults as innate. Instead, he paints a compassionate and nuanced picture of hillbilly culture, thoughtfully analyzing the community’s collective tendency towards social decay and helplessness. Though Vance calls for agency in his fellow hillbillies and tactfully presents himself as a success story of ambition, he also recognizes -- through both analysis and anecdote -- the certain inevitability of hardship that comes from a cultural tradition of poverty. Using pathos-driven tones of compassion that are often associated with liberal rhetoric to make a...