Trapped

                Confinement of any sort is negative in some way, shape, or form. Physical confinement will, eventually, devise a lasting effect on the psyche; a much harder prison to escape. On the flip side, a mental kind of confinement can cause a physical kind, like if somebody began closing themselves off from others by locking themselves in their room to avoid conversation. In the Diamond as Big as the Ritz, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Braddock Washington keeps an abundant amount of people trapped under his rule. He has an inescapable pit in the ground full of helpless people that are forced stay there for the rest of their lives, and African Americans stuck serving the Washington family without realizing “that slavery was abolished” for the rest of their lives.

      Ironically, though, Braddock has trapped himself along the process of trapping others. He has confined himself to his own house atop a mountain of diamond. To preserve the wealth, he doesn’t even bother to live an actual life or preserve moral integrity, including his last moments before death. Since he lacks any of these feelings for himself, it makes sense that he wouldn’t take a second glance at the sight of another human suffering. His mind is fixed in a mentality consisting of one single view of the world, a view which holds wealth—and only wealth. This view trickled into the minds of his children, too. Kismine, for example, is blissfully unaware of anything outside the house. In the end, she happily runs into the arms of poverty because of this.