Novel: Rich Man, Poor Man

Overview
"Rich Man, Poor Man" is a sprawling mid-20th-century American family saga that traces the divergent lives of the Jordache siblings as they navigate ambition, resentment and the shifting opportunities of postwar America. Set against the restless social and economic landscape from the 1940s into the 1960s, the novel lays out parallel trajectories: one sibling's calculated climb into wealth and respectability, another's descent into bitterness and violence, and a sister's quieter but telling adjustments to class and desire. The story examines how personal choices and structural forces conspire to shape destiny.
The novel concentrates on momentum and consequence, showing how the pursuit of success can demand moral compromise while failure breeds its own corrosive pride. Irwin Shaw renders a panorama of American life that ranges from small-town confines to corporate boardrooms, always attentive to the human costs of social mobility and the stubborn hold of family history.

Plot and Structure
The narrative follows the Jordache family from a modest upbringing through the pressures of adulthood, alternating focus among characters to build a composite portrait. One brother harnesses discipline and ambition to remake himself, taking calculated risks that propel him into the world of business and influence. Another brother resists conformity, reacting to humiliation and limited prospects with anger that leads him into criminality and estrangement. Their sister negotiates relationships and social expectations in ways that reveal gendered limits and strategies for survival.
Shaw arranges episodes and flashpoints to emphasize contrasts: private intimacies and public maneuvers, sudden reversals and long-term accruals of advantage or damage. The structure allows both sweeping social observation and close psychological insight, showing how singular moments and everyday choices accumulate into life outcomes.

Main Characters
The most prominent figure embodies the archetypal self-made man: shrewd, pragmatic and morally flexible when necessary, he becomes a symbol of postwar aspiration and the compromises that often accompany it. His counterpart is defined less by coherent plans than by a hard-edged pride and a propensity for rebellion; his life traces the limits of resistance within a stratified society. The sister's arc offers a counterpoint, exposing how gender affects opportunity and negotiation, and showing the ways women's ambitions are constrained or rerouted.
Secondary characters populate the novel as mirrors and catalysts: mentors and rivals, lovers and enemies whose interactions with the Jordaches illuminate the broader forces of class, politics and personal ambition. Relationships are complex and often transactional, revealing both tenderness and exploitation.

Themes
At its heart, the novel is an interrogation of the American Dream: who attains it, what they sacrifice, and what it costs those left behind. Shaw probes social mobility not as an abstract ideal but as a lived process shaped by luck, timing, temperament and moral choice. Themes of ambition, resentment, sexual politics, and the corrosive effects of envy recur throughout, alongside examinations of power, corruption and the price of respectability.
Shaw also explores family as inheritance and burden. Familial loyalties and rivalries act as a crucible where personal ethics are forged and unmade. The novel insists that success and failure are rarely pure; each carries compromises that complicate the triumphant narrative.

Style and Tone
The prose is direct, observant and unsparing, combining realist detail with psychological acuity. Shaw's voice moves between panoramic social description and intimate interiority, often deploying irony to underscore moral ambiguities. Dialogue and scene work convey social texture, from small-town claustrophobia to the antiseptic language of business and politics.
The book's pacing alternates deliberate build-up with sudden eruptions of violence or revelation, mirroring the unpredictability of life and the sudden consequences of long-held resentments.

Reception and Legacy
Upon publication the novel became a bestseller and reinforced Shaw's reputation for incisive social storytelling. Critics praised its scope and the vividness of its characters, even as some found its moral judgments complicated or its length ambitious. The story reached broader recognition through later television adaptations that brought the Jordaches into popular culture.
Enduringly, the novel stands as a vivid dramatization of postwar American aspirations and anxieties, a study of how private ambitions intersect with social structures to produce triumphs and tragedies that resonate beyond any single family.