The enlightenment era was not all that it is cracked up to be. Even though it opened up a new way of thinking while changing science and math permanently, it did not do anything as dramatic as ending world hunger, or automatically spreading endless wealth through out the world. The class structure still remained the same. With new cool gadgets coming into being, they still had a price. Cuckoo clocks, telescopes, pocket watch, and many more inventions were still only affordable by middle to upper class people.

In Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, He wanted to show that although technology advanced rapidly in the generation before, it did not effect the class structure. Gogh wanted to portray the lower class as they really were. He showed that life was just as depressing and miserable as ever for these low paid workers as it shows in the painting through the blackness and shear hell that they are living in.