“The very rich are different from you and me”

“The very rich are different from you and me” is a reflection on wealth’s extreme scale, prompted by a conversation about the fortunes of Max Devore. Michael Noonan considers the saying’s truth not as a casual distinction between rich and poor, but as a difference so large that ordinary comparisons stop making sense; his decision to keep the thought to himself gives the observation a quiet social edge.

The Scale of Wealth

Michael thinks that the familiar comparison understates the gap between ordinary wealth and the very richest. He describes wealth as resembling the Richter scale: after a certain point, each jump is not merely double or triple the last, but an astonishing, ruinous multiple. The analogy turns an abstract matter of money into one of magnitude, suggesting that the difference is not simply more of the same.

His own limited experience with money is enough, he reflects, to recognize that the comparison being discussed is inaccurate. The relevant divide is one of degree that becomes so vast it can feel like a difference in kind: Max Devore’s fortune stands beyond the scale of the other wealthy summer residents under discussion.

The Saying in Conversation

The reflection follows Bill Dean’s account of Lance Devore’s acceptance in the local community. Lance was liked as a young man who could hit a softball three hundred and fifty feet into the trees, and people at Warrington's on Tuesday nights did not hold his father’s reputation against him. Nor, Bill says, did they resent the family’s money; wealthy summer visitors were familiar, even if none had as much as Max Devore.

Michael silently disputes Bill’s suggestion that great wealth is only a matter of degree. He considers invoking Fitzgerald’s insight, then decides to say nothing. Bill is on his way to check the Harrimans’ sump-pump, and Michael lets the practical errand end the conversation rather than turn the moment into an argument. The saying therefore appears as an unspoken correction: its force lies partly in the distance between what Michael recognizes and what he chooses to voice.

Narrative and Social Significance

The passage sets two kinds of acceptance beside one another. Lance can be welcomed on his own merits, while his father’s immense fortune remains a separate fact that local familiarity does not erase. Bill’s account treats wealth as a continuous scale; Michael’s analogy insists that beyond a threshold, the scale itself no longer communicates the gulf.

The thought also complicates the easy assumption that money is simply a larger quantity of the same resource. By likening its upper reaches to Richter-scale jumps, Michael makes extreme wealth feel disproportionate and potentially ruinous, while his silence keeps that judgment private. The expression thus links social belonging to economic power without claiming that Lance’s popularity depended on his father’s fortune.