Midsummer Night's Dream Social Hierarchy

Social classes, through generalizations, define the individuals living within them. Unfortunately, this separation among people can be difficult to overcome. The divide between social classes has been prevalent in societies throughout history. The contrast between people of different positions in the social hierarchy often causes conflict within these populations. Shakespeare analyzes this topic in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He accomplishes this through several sets of characters that are divided by social rankings. Although this theme is applied to Elizabethan times in Shakespeare's writing, the social hierarchy is still prevalent in today's world. In well developed countries like the United States, many believe that the social hierarchy has been destroyed. There are still, however, clear examples of impoverished people facing challenges in life due to their class. For instance, residents of a low-income city, Flint, Michigan, have had lead-poisoned water coming out of their pipes for almost a year without any sign of help. The current crisis is in occurrence mainly because the city's inhabitants are lower class
When Bottom returns to his normal position in the social hierarchy, he is extremely discouraged and claims that “man is but a patched fool if he” (Shakespeare, 127) believes someone of power could be in love with a mere peasant. With this portion of the plot, Shakespeare informs the reader that having relationships and traveling within the social hierarchy is near impossible. The nature of a social caste system prohibits interrelations between the classes, making members of one class unaware of other groups. In short, social classes lead to a disconnect between the members of a society, causing it to be unintegrated and