The Good Life

Smith’s exploration of satisfaction and wealth in her poem happens against the backdrop of the individuals relation to society. Even before the first line, the title implies a search for an individual life (“The” good life), but its nature as a common saying connotes a general, universal understanding of good living. This tension is swiftly codified as crucial to the poem when Smith opens her first line with “some people talk[ing]” (Line 1) about money, drawing attention to the social. Much like the implied people behind the saying “The Good Life,” the multitudes in the poem are always indistinct. They appear as “some people” (Line 1), the vague and general “They” (Line 2), and finally the distant “everyone else” (Line 9).

The appearance of the masses in the poem, then, is always vague—it is always the faceless masses. The speaker’s individual experience is defined against and by her conception of “everyone else” (Line 9). Before Smith expresses her views on money, the poem is careful to present the views of “some people” (Line 1). Even the concluding satisfaction of the poem is presented by means of this relationship. It is not only that the speaker could feast after payday, but that she could feast “like everyone else” that creates this nostalgic memory of the good life. This brings into focus the relativity of wealth: the speaker’s happiness with “chicken and red wine” (Line 10) is both a result of these foods relative to her everyday “coffee and bread” (Line 5), and of the dining experience relative to “everyone else[’s]” (Line 9). In other words, the poem uses its focus on the individual versus the multitudes to further enforce its reflection on wealth, happiness, and their complicated relationship’s dependance on memory, comparison, and other elements of situational context. It is not money itself that gives the good life, but the way money and happiness and conception of self (compared to other people) all relate to one another.