Nickel And Dimed Analysis Essay

Are pennies worth minting? Many people believe they’re a waste of money, but some people believe that they’re still worth minting. Pennies should not be minted for many reasons such as, the penny costs more money to make then the penny has in value. Another reason is that pennies are a severe waste in time such as people often pay with pennies as a practical joke, which means hard working employees often have to spend the time to count those pennies. The final reason is because the penny is losing the government money.

Discrimination definitely shaped Ehrenreich’s story. She had many advantages compared to others who actually live in this life style. One of her advantages was her race, another big advantage was not having any children. All these play a role in her story/ experience. She becomes aware at the end of her experiment that the living situation of minimum wage earners are nothing like those of upper class, such as herself.

It shows though she was ignoring how hard each day was trying to live life as a minimum wage worker overall, she was still able to get a laugh out of the entire own situation as a whole. It’s also a creative way to keep the readers interested in order for them to understand and want to actually know about the process of the poor. For example, Ehrenreich explains how one impatient black couple that was waiting for her to get around to taking their order looked "ready to summon the NAACP. " Later she then talks about how an available room at one of her motel choices is on the ground floor of a "well-traveled commercial street, meaning you have a choice between privacy and light.

Although the rich and the poor may be categorized into two different communities, they do, however, both share a similar characteristic. The stories “A&P” by John Updike and “Wife of His Youth” by Charles W. Chesnutt each have protagonists, or characters we should identify with. The character, Sammy, from “A&P” is comparable to Mr Ryder, from “Wife of His Youth” in multiple ways. In “A&P” Sammy is a grocery clerk who sees some beautiful women. He decides to stand up for them when his boss confronts them, and ends up quitting his job.

In Ehrenreich’s article, she starts off the article by informing the audience of a President named Lyndon B. Johnson who promised to create a better environment or economic help to those who are in poverty. The author, however,

Throughout the human history, people always help each other, as it is a part of a human nature. In pre-civilized world, any migrant tribe look after of the older and physically weaker members of their group by sharing food. The Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, and the Islamic cultures developed a more sophisticated assistance for their impoverished citizens. Charities along with governmental relief came in forms of food, clothing, monetary allowances, hospitals, and housing for the elderly and orphans.

Associations are built to raise awareness, the march of dimes an association that was founded in 1938 by Franklin D Roosevelt. The march of dime was built for an awareness to Polio epidemics, later leading to the march of dimes march for babies. On july 22, 1958 Basil O’Connor announced a new mission to prevent birth defects, funding all research and treatment for birth defects in hospitals across the country. Improving the outcome of pregnancy in 1976,March of Dimes broadened its approach to improving birth outcomes by incorporating perspectives in perinatal health that appropriately considered the health of all pregnant women and babies. By the 1970s, the March of Dimes focus on prevention of birth defects and infant mortality began to encompass

In the article “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty” Barbara Ehrenreich gives her view in poverty and explains why she think Michael Harington’s book “The Other American” gives a wrong view on poverty. She explained that Harrington believes that the poor thought and felt differently and what divides the poor was their different “culture of poverty.” Ehrenreich goes on to explain on how the book that became a best seller caused so many bad stereotypes on the poor that by the Reagan era poverty was seen as “bad attitudes” and “faulty lifestyles” and not by the lack of jobs or low paying jobs. And they also viewed the poor as “Dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock.”

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.

The Truth About Poverty “Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit” this quote was said by Mahatma Gandhi and it relates so well with this article “It is Expensive To Be Poor”, answer the question yourself, Is it expensive to be poor? This article is titled like that to get the audience's attention early and have them thinking ahead of reading. The author Barbara Ehrenreich is building a pre thought when she does this which helps support her claim. “It is Expensive To Be Poor” by Barbara Ehrenreich is an article posted on “The atlantic” “which is where you can find your current news and analysis on politics, business, culture, and technology”. Knowing what “The Atlantic” offers for readers this gives Ehrenreich a detailed look at who she is writing to.

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.

The parts that stood out to me in this book were that the rate of neonatal deaths is higher in the United States than in any other developed country. I found this interesting because the idea that the old-fashioned theory has created some of the modern political beliefs of why a person may end up in a disadvantaged situation. Another part that stood out to me was when Abramsky hypothesized that if funds were spent on programs supporting individuals from the selected groups then less money would be spent on other government funded programs. Lastly, when Abramsky discussed the statistics about Bill Clinton lowering poverty rates from 15.1% to a little over 11% and then when Bush took over, the poverty rates rose again.

The American Dream is almost purely run by structural forces, in her perspective, that are constantly attempting to impede the middle class’ ability for upward mobility. Those who are impoverished are there because of their surroundings, the institutions that shape their lives and therefore, they simply cannot find any way out of the poverty trap in which they have found themselves. While Ehrenreich was conducting her case study, she attempted to determine if the American Dream was by attempting to immerse herself in the culture of the poor. She only did so partially due to several stipulations that she set for the experiment as she stated that she would not live in a shelter (Shepard did), that she would not get rid of her vehicle and rely on public transportation (Shepard also did this); however, she did note that even for her, being partially immersed as she was, still found there to be not much difference between herself and those that worked around. She believed, from her experiences, that the social structure of the employment opportunities, was a systematic way to dehumanize the workers.

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.

Social inequality is overlooked by many. It affects so many of us, though we have yet to realize how extreme it is. Lee argues in this novel how much stress social inequalities put on the black and white races throughout the 1930s. Although, social inequalities did not just affect different races, it also affected poor people and family backgrounds. These are proven in the novel multiple times through Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and the Cunninghams when the book is looked at more in