Class is what every person in this country aspires to be. People spend their entire lives trying to improve their own social status and often end up completely miserable. A person can climb the corporate ladder only to find themselves completely alone at the top. The only gratification they seek is payment. Money is not class. Money is something people confuse with social status. It is true that the upper class is generally very well off, but money is not the only thing that makes them upper class. This point is illustrated in both the novel Black Gangster by Donald Goines and the hit (no pun intended) HBO series, The Sopranos. Two of the main characters, Prince and Tony, are both rich and powerful men, but unfortunately they both lack class. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay There are two words that can describe Tony Soprano, scum and sack. She is a horrible person and her upper class lifestyle will only be a moment in her life. His source of income is murder, extortion and theft. Clearly, Tony isn't really seen by anyone besides himself as upper class. There is no way the current upper class will ever accept him. He is their novelty. We see it in an episode where Tony goes to play golf with his neighbor and his two friends. His neighbor, a doctor, makes a living from the people he helps. In my mind, this can actually be considered a class. The doctor friends, who are also real members of the upper class, persist in asking Tony mafia-type questions, as if he were Al Capone's sidekick. They don't see Tony as one of them. He is a complete stranger and will never, whatever happens, be accepted as someone of high social standing. In a way, Tony and the team of Doctors are like skinny girls with fat friends; it helps them feel better about themselves. Personally, I think that if Tony earned a decent living with a good education, he would have a lot more class. Anyone can tell from hearing Tony or any of his family members speak that they are clearly uneducated. It's not just the strong Jersey accent. He really is a stupid man when it comes to anything that has nothing to do with business. It's a shame he doesn't vividly describe how he runs his business. If he did, maybe some people would think he's smarter than he looks and doesn't act. This is probably the only place where Tony has class, his business management skills. Tony, as the head of his company, is a place in his miserable life where he is respected for what he does. Even though many problems arise in his business, he tends to find suitable measures to resolve them relatively quickly. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that if a corporate merger goes bad, punching someone is an elegant thing to do. I just see Tony at this point in his life as more solid in his identification than in the rest of his pseudo-lifestyle. When he's at work, he doesn't try to be something he's not. At work Tony is a gangster, he knows he's a gangster and he doesn't try to be any other way. This could possibly be due to the two-family aspect of his life. When Tony is working, he doesn't need to act classy; he's supposed to be a bastard. Not many people will stand in a park and watch some madman drive by in a Lexus, chasing someone who owes them money andwill think: Wow, now that's what I call classy. Tony knows that it is not a respectable job to live, this is shown several times during the first season as he speaks to his psychiatrist. He has regrets and he admits it to her. At home, Tony doesn't act like himself. He almost puts on a show for his family every day of his life. He presents himself as this great family man, with strong family values ​​and a legitimate profession. Honestly, he succeeds most of the time. There are moments in the series where you forget that he just strangled a man with an extension cord and think, Awwwwwww, he's such an awesome father/husband. As I said before, this is his pseudo-lifestyle. I can't really believe that a serial killer could be a great father figure or husband. He plays it for his family, and they absorb it as quickly as he can dish it out. They are sponges for his false sense of class. Carmella, his wife, is showered with gifts so maybe she will forget that her husband lies, cheats, steals and kills to get these gifts. The family lives in a very large house and expensive cars and SUVs are parked in the driveway. I suppose it's entirely possible that Tony thinks that's what classes are for. Having things and money to buy more things. He's obviously not the only person in the world like that. There are a lot of them, which is why social identities are disappearing now. Someone quite close to Tony's predicament is Prince. He is a classic example of the villain who thought the only way out of his ghetto was through crime. There's an old adage that crime doesn't pay. In reality, crime pays, it pays a lot, but in the end, so do you. Prince had unlimited respect from everyone in his gang. He also had the respect of most of the gangs in town, and if he was disrespected, he showed them that he should be respected by killing someone. I think Prince's confusion with class was the fact that he had everything he could want. Cars, money, drugs, power, you name it, and he probably had it. When they first arrived at the gang's new hideout, Goines said there were three black sedans and two Cadillacs parked in the private driveway. The house was one of the old mansions on Chicago Boulevard, once owned by an auto industry millionaire. The place still concealed a magnetic glory (Goines, 127). This kind of life could easily go to your head as a feeling of new social position. But, again, these are just things that money bought. The fact that the money that funded this place was entirely drug and prostitution money throws the idea of ​​class into the trash. Prince and his entire crew were under this false sense of class. They all thought that they had succeeded and that they wouldn't have to worry about anything once all the threats were gone. If they had gone to school, become doctors, and become successful that way, this might be true. Unfortunately, they chose prostitution and selling drugs. It was a bad choice on their part considering they all end up dead because of it. They paid for the crime that paid for their artificial class. Even if Prince had a closet full of silk suits and drove a Cadillac, someone who was truly upper class wouldn't even look his way. One good thing about Prince though is that he didn't confuse his work with his home life. His work was his home life and his home life was his work. He didn't need to pretend to be a happy family man,.