Analysis Of Alice's Wonderland

Submitted By education254
Words: 859
Pages: 4

There are just some things that people in this world just do not want to talk about. There are some topics that truly make people angry regardless of your point of view on the topic. One such topic is the extent that some people and companies will go to in order to obtain more wealth but at what point would you consider it to be hypocritical? In the article Rebecca Mead’s Alice’s Wonderland, it started out boring talking about a lady buying works of art although the lady buying them sounded interesting. The woman buying the artwork was Alice Walton, daughter of the late Sam Walton, the founder of the WalMart Corporation. The author tries to paint Alice Walton as a traditional American woman by stating that Walton does not have the expensively curated look of a Park Avenue matron, her face is tanned and weather-beaten, and shows no signs of having been submitted to the surgeon’s knife. (Mead, 2011) She goes on to state that Walton wears her steel-gray hair pulled back in a straggly bun and that for a rich person, she lives relatively modestly: the house on her ranch in Texas, where she spends most of her time, is a simple one-story affair, apart from the masterpieces that have hung on its walls, when guests visit, she cooks dinner herself, though she has help to do the cleaning up. (Mead, 2011) I thought that the story would get a little more interesting but it really did not and what truly got me reading into this article from a critical standpoint is when Mead quotes Walton who stated, “You buy the best lettuce you can at the best price you can.” (Mead, 2011) According to the author, about a decade ago, WalMart began asking its venders to establish satellite offices in Bentonville, and unsightly office parks and gated subdivisions with names such as Liberty Bell have swiftly replaced farmland. (Mead, 2011) Mead goes on to add that even Walton wishes that Bentonville had stronger zoning laws, but she is proud that the town is thriving and dismisses the argument that WalMart has marred the American landscape. (Mead, 2011) Those comments made by the author and by Ms. Walton were what got me heated. Everyone knows that you can shop at WalMart for their supposedly “low prices” but if you take a look at the majority of the products that the company sells, they are not made here in the United States. Most of the products are outsourced to China or other countries where workers are paid far less than what an American worker would be paid to produce the produce the products. We can all speculate why this is but you can usually boil it down to one thing, profit. Companies want to produce the cheapest product for the highest profit and paying someone from another country less than the minimum wage for an American worker so you can do so is what they will do, and WalMart is no different. For Ms. Walton to say that she is making this museum to show pride in America and American artists is very hypocritical in my opinion. If that was truly the case, why according to Mead would Ms. Walton take her architect for the museum travelling to Europe, looking at other museums for inspiration? (Mead, 2011) If you had so much pride in