Freewrite- Valley of Ashes!

Do you remember the valley of ashes from chapter two of The Great Gatsby? This place had me thinking about Philadelphia and how it is split up by different groups of people. In The Great Gatsby, the valley of ashes was a place in the city that was basically where all of the poor people lived. This area was created by industrial dumping and was dirty and not many people would like to go there. The rest of the city was blatantly better than this area, which made it seem that much worse.

There are a few places like the valley of ashes in Philly, but I don’t recall seeing any that are that bad. Now, I don’t want to offend anyone who may live in those areas, but there is defiantly a clear distinction between certain parts of the city. One difference that I notice everyday is how Passyunk Avenue divides South Philly into two parts. On one side of Passyunk, there are not so great houses where mostly minorities live. While on the other side there are noticeably nicer houses where mostly whites live. Now I have no clue how this happened, but it is very noticeable. I’m not trying to say that the side of Passyunk with the not so great houses is like the valley of ashes, I’m just saying that it is defiantly not as great as the other side. If the entire city looked like the better side of Passyunk, then the other side would defiantly look like a valley of ashes. There are other parts of Philly that resemble this and are even worse. Though I do not remember exactly where they are, I do know that other parts of the city are worse than any part of South Philly, where I live.
The valley of ashes is a place where I think no one would like to live. It is considered a place where only poor people live. It is basically the worst part of a city. No one would be proud of that. Although there are places in Philly that don’t look as good as other parts, I don’t think it is that bad to the point where it could be called a valley of ashes.