Rags to riches

Rags to riches (also rags-to-riches) refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth, a form of social mobility. It is a frequent trope in fictional storytelling, where it is frequently portrayed as due to talent. The process can sometimes occur in real life, but the probability for any given person is very low, and depends chiefly on luck (e.g. winning a lottery) or inheritance.

Fictional examples

• Fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Aladdin.
• The Dickens novel Oliver Twist, whose protagonist rises from a workhouse to child labour to a gang of pickpockets to being adopted by a wealthy family.
• The Arthurian story of Sir Gareth, who rises from a lowly kitchen boy to a prominent Knight of the Round Table.
• The folklore tale of Dick Whittington and His Cat, who, with the help of his cat, rises from orphaned poverty to become thrice Lord Mayor of London.
• Many novels by Horatio Alger.

Real-life examples

Rulers:

• Maximinus Thrax, an emperor of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, who (according to the Augustan History) was a shepherd and bandit before he joined the Roman army. His ancestors were slaves and Thracians (an ethnic minority in the Roman Empire).
• Diocletian, an emperor of the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 4th century AD who was a lowborn.
• Justin I, Justinian I, Basil I, the rulers of the Byzantine Empire who were born as peasants, but became emperors.
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the de facto ruler of Japan in the 16th century AD who was born to a peasant, but became second "Great Unifier" of Japan.

Modern businesspeople:

• Oprah Winfrey, an American celebrity who was born into poverty, but became a billionaire.
• Howard Schultz, an American businessman who claimed that he has been born in a poor family (that statement is disputed).
• Jan Koum, an American billionaire businessman and computer programmer who was born in a Jewish family in Soviet Ukraine—his family was poor when they immigrated to the US.
• John Paul DeJoria, an American billionaire businessman who was in a foster home during his childhood due to the fact that his mother was poor after she divorced John's father.

Criticism

The concept of "rags to riches" has been criticized by social reformers, anti-capitalists, revolutionaries, essayists, and statisticians, who argue that only a handful of exceptionally capable and/or mainly lucky persons can travel the "rags to riches" road, being the great publicity given to such cases causes a natural survivorship bias illusion, which obscures cases contrary to the rags-to-riches narrative (sometimes called riches-to-rags).

Peña and Weiss argue these misapprehensions help keep the masses of the working class and the working poor in line, and prevent them from agitating for an overall collective change in the direction of social equality.

References

External links

• Al-Fahim, Mohammed. From Rags to Riches: A Story of Abu Dhabi, I. B. Tauris, Limited 1998, , London Centre for Arab Studies.