Nickel And Dimed Rhetorical Analysis

Pathos dominates the article when Ehrenreich allows her nephews mother in law, grandchildren, and daughter to move into her house. The situation focuses on pathos because in Ehrenreich’s personal story she includes that “Peg, was, like several million other Americans, about to lose her home to foreclosure” (338). She is effective in her writing by appealing to the readers’ emotions through visual concepts and personal experiences. When I read the article, I felt emotional because the working poor are not fortunate to know if they will have a house or food the next day. I agree with Ehrenreich in which the poor are as important as the wealthy group who get more recognition.

Minimum wage has always been a difficult topic to talk about in political situations with questions about increasing or decreasing it forever on the ballot. In today’s economic state there has been an increase of the minimum wage in several states such as California; which has caused a debate on the national level of how much the lower class can live on. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book she tries out low wage living and documents it in Nickel and Dimed, in her opinion it's barely possible to survive on low wages for even one person. To show this she employs conversational and concrete diction to show the difficulties of living two lives that are at different poles of the economic scale and the ignorance of both classes to those besides themselves with a confusion of audiences.

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.”

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.

Nevertheless, she concludes that their socioeconomic class is burdened with even more events. Listing off each of her co-workers, Ehrenreich discovers the majority live in overcrowded situations, with relatives or in pay-as-you-go standards; others, like one particular co-worker share rent with people who are not of good character, but can alleviate the financial strain; finally, to her surprise, the hostess who were paid the most was living in the worst standard, in her vehicle (Ehrenreich, 20-21). This is one of the focal points of Ehrenreich’s investigation: while some might obtain “aid” from the government, it does not prevent consequences that the middle class does not see. As Ehrenreich discovers from Gail’s breakdown of payments for surviving by herself versus staying with her sexually harassing roommate, she beings to understand the financial discrimination that the poor

People in poverty are generally portrayed as worthless and this is because culture today illustrates a man’s worth from how materially successful they are. Hooks explains how this kind of representation of the poor can mentally and emotionally handicap and entire society of people in poverty. She goes into an example of how a

The author describes an image about the kitchen and the rest room. The author describes the kitchen with following quotes, “The kitchen is a cavern,” “The floor is slick with spills,” and “Sinks everywhere are clogged with scraps of lettuce, decomposing lemon wedges, water-logged toast crusts”. The effect of the imagery is to show the chaos of the kitchen, and to emphasize how bad the working environment is. Thus the audience can realize that how substandard and dirty the kitchen is, which beyonds audiences’ expectation due to the public impression that a kitchen should be the cleanest place due to its function of preparing and saving food. Later, the author continues to use imagery as describing the rest room.

Past leaders such as Andrew Jackson, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Marc Antony are evidence that society does not reward morality and good character in leadership. Society is drawn to leaders that have good rhetoric, propaganda, and charismatic personalities, and society supports them despite their immorality. Society is concerned about stability more than the morality of their leaders and will support immoral leaders in times of crisis to provide stability. In history there have been multiple leaders that have used rhetoric, propaganda and charismatic personalities to gain power, despite their morals.

In Monroe County, Florida, where Key West resides, the living wage is considered to be $13.10; in Portland, Maine, the living wage is $11.16, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it is $11.01. The highest wage that Barbara was ever offered was $10.00 an hour as a plumber while everywhere else she made either minimum wage or lower with tips. She was barely able to scrape by, and based off the livin wage estimates, would have been lucky if she could have afforded an apartment during her stay in any of the cities in which she had attempted to reside. Whether her wages were simply lower because of her gender was not established, but even if she were making these wages as a male, she would more than likely have to room with someone in order to afford an apartment, something that she said she would not do at the outset of the case study. However, Shepard, should have been able to survive in Charleston if he could maintain a decent tip after all of his moving appointments.

Ethos, logos, and pathos are forms of the rhetorical choices the author used to further convey her argument to her audience. Her use of ethos is noted in the beginning of the nonfiction piece, where she discusses her career as an author and newspaper writer; she lists her credentials and gives the readers information about her life. Each of the footnotes Ehrenreich inscribed at the bottoms of pages in the book serves as a use of logos; they are statistics and historical records providing data about companies, labor laws, and other information pertinent to previous passages. Pathos involves the author appeals to the audience’s emotions, and Ehrenreich achieves this when describing her co-worker's lives. They have limited time with family and friends due to being occupied full time by their

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.

In “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the author uses diction like abstract diction and details by explaining what he exactly wants in life to demonstrate Walter and his dream. To begin, Hansberry uses diction to demonstrate Walter and his dream by using abstract diction. She does this by explaining how he will give Travis anything for his seventeenth birthday and that he will “hand you the world!” (2.2). This shows that he wants to make his sons life as good as possible.

In this passage, Charlotte Perkins Gilman highlights the theme that women must use their intellect or go mad through the use of literary qualities and writing styles. Gilman also uses the use of capital letters to portray the decline in the narrators’ sanity. This shows the decline in the sanity of a person because the words in all-caps is shown as abrupt, loud remarks. Gilman uses this method multiple times in her short story and this method was used twice in this passage. When the narrator wrote, “LOOKING AT THE PAPER!”, the major decline in her mental health was shown.

Approximately 48,472,800 Americans live in poverty: 15.2% of the population. Poverty is clearly an ongoing issue in today’s society. Many people today look down upon, and think badly of, those who are impoverished. Intolerance of poverty is an attitude held by most characters in “The Jacket”. These attitudes reflect the current intolerance towards poverty and persist throughout the story.

As a reader reads Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed on (Not) Getting by in America, they get an insight on what it is like to live a low income life. Ehrenreich proposes the argument in the introduction that poverty is a serious matter and just because one has a job does not mean they are not considered poor. She wants to persuade us to realize that American is not the land of opportunity as promised and portrayed and there are regular people who are struggling to live a comfortable life. Throughout her book she mentions her experiences with living on minimum wage, the hiring process, and how she felt being put in that position. After reading Ehrenreich’s book I am thoroughly persuaded.