Everyone dreams about big houses, expensive cars and clothes, but how many people stop to think about the more positive things they could do with their money? Every once in a while, someone makes it out of poverty but rarely looks back at the mold they came out of that made them into the person they have become. Many people have the crabs in a bucket mentality in the sense that when one crab tries to make it out the rest of them keep it from escaping because they are afraid of what is out there. When one crab does make it out of the impoverished bucket to a new, better world it never looks back to its bucket or in the real world, its community. In Ready Player One, we meet Wade Watts, a poor teenager living in Ohio in 2045. At this time the …show more content…
In Ready Player One, when Wade and Sam talk about what they would spend their money on Wade says, “The usual, I guess. Move into a mansion. Buy a bunch of cool shit. Not be poor.” (Cline 97) and then Sam replies with, “If I win that dough, I’m going to make sure everyone on this planet has something to eat. Once we tackle world hunger, then we can figure out how to fix the environment and solve the energy crisis.” (97). This shows us how Wade would use his money in a selfish way and then also gives us an example of how the money should be spent with how Sam would spend her money. On the other hand, in To Pimp a Butterfly, in the songs “King Kunta”, and “Wesley’s Theory” Lamar raps about what he did with his fame before and after getting it. In the first verse of “Wesley’s Theory” Lamar says he will use his money on getting himself fancy things, guns, and jewelry for him and his friends. Then on the second verse he speaks as Uncle Sam, which tells him to go ahead and do whatever he wants with his money, but as soon as he changes his mind and decides to do something worthwhile with his money he will, “Wesley snipe him” with tax evasion and put him in prison so that he cannot make the changes he wants to. In “King Kunta” Lamar speaks about how now that he is back in Compton he is making sure no one talks down about him or tries to challenge his power because he is now the …show more content…
Clearly this problem was something that Lamar had no control over, but he feels guilty for it, showing that under his dominant loud exterior portrayed in “King Kunta” were hiding his true pain and guilt. This is solidified further in the song when Lamar blames himself for the deaths of one of his friends, and how he did not go off tour to visit him, at this point Lamar is still drunk and crying over this friend he lost but what could he have done in that situation? He could not save his friend’s life even if he did come back but his pain and guilt are too overwhelming for him to fight them. The song strongly portrays his pain through lyrics about him wanting to commit suicide and hating himself for causing these things which he could not have