Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed On (Not) Getting By In America

Serving America: Two Tales of Survival Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in the country.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act). More than eighty years later, the idea of a “living wage” is still a politically decisive issue—an issue that many Americans feel needs to be addressed. In her 2001 bestseller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich asks the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” (1).

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America is a critically acclaimed investigative biography of a reporter going undercover to see how individuals manage to live on minimum wage across America. More specifically, Barbara was curious about how were “the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour” (1)? Ehrenreich developed a plan and some rules for her undercover research for finding jobs, housing, and living expenses. The research for this book covered a span of three states, Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, between spring of 1998 and summer of 2000.

In the book of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich presents to readers an overall perspective on how the unskilled women to be forced to join the labor market after the American welfare reform on 1998. Interestingly, this presentation is actually based on Ehrenreich’s practical experiences. She participates into the lifestyle of the poor in the low-wage labor market in order to experiences and researches that living style as an “undercover journalist”. Moreover, Ehrenreich wants to find an answer for the question if she could survive and maintain her living with low wage just like the way “four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or$7 an hour” (Nickel and Dimed, pg.1). In fact, three

The solution to the minimum-wage problem that haunts American workers in the 21st century is to strive for lower everyday expenses rather than for a higher minimum wage. The renowned author Barbara Ehrenreich, in her informational novel Nickel and Dimed, tells the story of how she performed a social experiment by working several minimum wage jobs, while living a lifestyle of a low-wage worker. In her novel, Ehrenreich concludes that minimum wage workers “in good health” can “barely support [themselves]” (199). Even though Ehrenreich earned “$1039 in one month,” at the end of the month she only had “$22 left over” as she had to spend “$517” on food and gas, and “$500” to pay her rent (197). As evident, Ehrenreich’s wage is not the cause of her

From the title “The Minimum-Wage War”, it may seem that Ehrenreich’s recollection of minimum wage work may not be as accurate as someone who faces the true pressures of working two minimum wage jobs a week; However, because she put herself in the same conditions, she created a credible experiment. Ehrenreich’s experiment was derived from the question “could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day.” She worked in various minimum wage environments, such as restaurants, a hotel, a cleaning service, and a nursing home. By working under the harsh conditions of minimum wage work, Ehrenreich discovered the difficulties of managing living expenses with such a limited budget. Despite the harsh nature of the work, there are still skeptics who feel that raising the minimum wage will reduce the number of jobs available to minimum wage workers.

In a New York Times article, “Too Poor to Make the News,” author Barbara Ehrenreich focuses on the impact the recession has caused to the lives of the working poor. She begins her article by describing how the newly group, known as Nouveau poor, have to give up valuables where as the working poor have to give up housing, food, and prescription medicines. Ehrenreich’s purpose is to inform her readers who are blessed enough not to suffer like the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich’s article examines the impacts the recession has on the lives of the working poor, by demonstrating pathos, and makes readers aware of the sufferings the poor have to face. Barbara Ehrenreich examines the aspects that are impacting the working poor from the recession.

Lamott continuously uses her personal experiences, mostly from “me and most of the other writers I know” to exemplify her arguments throughout the writing.

David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America describes the low-income Americans face. He notes that they are both impacted by the social, political and economic environment in which they live and a cause of their own poverty. Shipler makes his point through conversations with the working poor, their employers and those who are trying to help them break the cycle of poverty. He successfully argues that the solution to the problems faced by this group is that everyone needs to work together, government, private organizations and the working poor themselves, to change what is wrong with the system. But while his point is valid, the book, which claims to be objective in terms of its politics is not, and Shipler’s “us” versus “them”

Each and every author create a unique way of describing their own encounters that they have had in their life by bringing literary aspects and enriching the experiences from their lives and adding it to the story to place emphasis on the events that have had an impact on their lives. The author creates an emphasis on critical aspects of the story through the tone, where hearing the poet describing their own story gives light to what each poet puts emphasis on their own story and the influences that other people or have had on their lives. Not only does each poet have a unique way of telling a story but also their tone can describe many aspects of their life like what they are, passionate about, the connections that they have had which affects

I believe what makes her argument so persuasive, is the fact that she gets so many diverse perspectives from her many characters in the story. Ehrenreich’s existence is not only difficult, but everyone around her also has a very difficult existence as well. The reader understands the hardships of the characters through narrative, understands the difficulty of the job market through analysis, understands the inability to find a stable residence, through report, and understands the difficulty of the work-related issues that -staff of the diner faces through argument. Altogether these rhetorical strategies come work in harmony to enhance the connection between the characters in the story and the readers through differing perspectives, as well as the persuasive appeals of pathos, ethos, and

No Nickels or Dimes To Spare In the book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich writes the story, “Serving in Florida.” She describes her experience living as an undercover waitress when in reality she’s a journalist for culture and politics with a doctorate in biology. Ehrenreich experiences trying to survive on multiple low income jobs to understand what it is like to be in their shoes instead of being apart of the higher middle class.

Ericsson tries to reference values or experiences that she has shared with the reader to try and connect our arguments, to help show that the reader shares the same beliefs

One of the best-selling authors, Barbara Ehrenreich, in her narrative essay, “Serving in Florida,” describes her personal experience working in a local restaurant called Jerry’s. Ehrenreich’s purpose is to attach importance to the low-wage America workplace. Using rhetorical strategies such as negative diction, simile, images, and pathos, Ehrenreich attempts to raise public awareness of the low-wage workers’ life in her readers. Firstly, Barbara Ehrenreich exploits connotation of words and simile to emphasize the difficult life of the lower class.

She uses personal stories (pathos) well to pull on readers’ heart strings, as well as using word choice to portray a fearful mood. The first thing the author talks about in this essay is the conflict of whether or

Jack Nguyen AP English 3 30, July 2015 Nickel and Dimed Rhetorical Strategies and Notes Thesis: Ehrenreich’s personal use of varied rhetorical strategies allowed her to divulge the working conditions and struggles of the poverty-stricken class to the readers in order to provoke them to realize that something has to be done about poverty.. First Body: What: Allusion Pg. 2, Logos Pg. 37. How & Effect: Ehrenreich uses these personal, rhetorical strategies based on her experiences as a low-wage worker in the poor working class. The effect is that Ehrenreich is able to show the readers the conditions in which the impoverished work in and the daily obstacles that they face in life; also there is an appeal to logic and a reference of a poverty idiom. Why: Ehrenreich is deliberately using these rhetorical strategies to incite the readers about the fact that changes need to be done to poverty because it is a detrimental thing to society.