In today’s society people are judged primarily on their looks and the amount of money that they have. As we take a look into the short story, “Wild Plums”, one can agree that the primary purpose of this short story is to illustrate how people believe they are inferior to others because of the way they look or act. The main family in the story thinks they are too good to go pick wild plums with the slumps and they think they are too good to be around them.
When the little girl talks about visiting the Slump’s at their home, she says that they didn’t use chairs but rather sat on the floor or on boxes. When they describe how the slumps lived it always sounds mediocre to the way they their family lives.
The second time I knew about the plums was at Mrs. Slump’s house when she was making plum butter. She said she couldn’t ask us in because the floor was dirty from stirring jam. The Slump’s didn’t use chairs. They had boxes to sit on, and the children sat on the floor with the dogs.
Another example of their poverty is when the family goes to the slumps to pick up a plow that Mr. Slump had borrowed. The author explains that the Slumps just left their tools where they unhitched but, the little girl’s family had a shed where they put the machinery when it was not being used. Obviously the Slumps are not as openhanded as the little girl’s family, and are being treated as inferior because of this.
At the beginning of the story the little girl’s father tells her that wild plums are small and inferior. By saying this he downgrades the Slumps by presenting evidence that they were not as good as them because they had to go pick wild plums , which were obviously smaller than the ones that her family gets. The mother and father were also surprised when they learned that Mrs. Guare, the schoolteacher, would go with the Slumps to gather wild plums. The little girl knew gathering wild plums was not a nice thing to do but didn’t know why.
The Slumps would come by and offer to take the children and the parents to go plummin, but