1. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
This poem contrasts rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, young and old and so on.

2. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
An important American belief is that ‘all people are created equal’. Also, the ‘American Dream’ is the idea that your background is unimportant – if you work hard enough you can become anything you want. Perhaps Ferlinghetti is exploring this in his poem.

3. Fill out a chart to compare descriptions of the two groups:
Rich People
Garbage Men
Colours
Yellow truck, red blazers
Clothing
A hip three piece linen suit
Etc.

4. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
Quasimodo was ‘the hunchback of Notre Dame. Both he and gargoyles are considered very ugly.
Why do you think the garbage man is likened to these things?

5. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
Why are the garbage men called ‘scavengers’? What does it suggest about their relationship to the people in the car?

6. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
Why do you think the poet points out that one of the garbage men is ‘about the same age’ as the man in the car?

7. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
Why do you think the garbage men gaze down on the car ‘as from a great distance’ and ‘as if …watching some odorless TV ad’?

8. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
The red light treats the couple in the car and the garbage men equally by stopping them both for this moment in time. It is democratic.
But it is only ‘as if anything at all were possible between them’

9. Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
By the end of the poem, do you think that Ferlinghetti thinks that America treats people equally and offers them an equal opportunity?
Why?