Blended Response One summer a couple years back, I watched a documentary on how clothing was manufactured. The video was filled of disturbing images and videos of child workers. They rarely looked up to see the camera that filmed them, instead they continued to work at fast paces. I remember my inquisition as I thought of why they would allow children to be exploited and overworked at such young ages. I can recall a moment in the video where they showed a four year old boy. In the text titled “Live Free and Starve,” Divakaruni explores the consequences of a new bill on child labor and ultimately leads us to her core thought, that freedom comes at a cost.
Divakaruni made an argument that consists of strong ethos, logos and pathos. These support
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Her pathos is at it’s highest when she tells the story of the Nimai and then only gets stronger when she introduces strong passionate quotes such as, “And when many of these children turn to the streets, to survival through thievery and violence and begging and prostitution-as surely in the absence of other options they must-are we willing to shoulder that responsibility?” (Divakaruni 468). This quote shows her passion for the issue and expands the reader’s viewpoint by putting new possibilities of what these children may do if they cannot work into perspective. The author’s background in organizations that help women and children is also important to recall because it builds her trust once again and shows us her passion. This makes us aware of her experience and gives her paper a new …show more content…
This supports her paper because not only is she able to provide pathos and ethos in her paper she is able to support her paper with logic and facts as well. One compelling fact in her paper is “It is true that child labor is a terrible thing, especially for those children who are sold to employers by their parents at the age of five and six and have no way to protect themselves from abuse.” (Divakaruni 467) This gives us a logical viewpoint on the children affected and what happens to them.
Nevertheless, I agree with the author’s core idea that freedom comes with a price. I agree with the author on this because if you take into consideration her ideas on why child labor can not just be granted; children will stare and turn to new options of survival. We are able to understand why having programs and providing kids with education before freeing them is of great importance. The freedom of the child slaves who work in factories is held back by their lack of knowledge on how to survive without
However, there were many other violations of human rights that were not as promptly resolved. All around America, large industries began to exploit children as a cheaper alternative to adult labour. Knowing that families were struggling to survive in the extreme competitiveness of urban life and had few financial options, employers offered children jobs with extremely low rates. The employment of the youth, often referred to as “Child Slavery,” was notoriously demanding for young children (“The 1930s”). Due to the lack of sufficiently supportive jobs, families were forced to send off their children to supplement the household income.
The author Kevin Bales ,and co-writer Ron Soodalter, discuss the issues pertaining to forced labor in “Slavery in The Land of The Free”. Free The Slaves is a non-profit organization in Washington that Bales founded to help end slavery not only in the United States, but around the world. The Abraham Lincoln Institute has the honor to have the established historian, Soodalter, serve on it’s board.The two authors also wrote a book by the name of “The Slave Next Door: Human trafficking and Slavery in America Today” (2009). One of the issues that Bales and Soodalter effectively touch on is how widespread the issue of human trafficking and slavery is in
...hile African Americans went through journeys to escape the restrictions of their masters, women went through similar journeys to escape the restrictions of the men around them. Immigrants further strived to fit in with the American lifestyle and receive recognition as an American. All three groups seemed to shape up an American lifestyle. Today, all three of these perceptions of freedom have made an appearance in our lives. As we can see, the transition of freedom from race equality to gender equality shows that freedom has been on a constant change. Everyone acquires their own definition of freedom but the reality of it is still unknown; people can merely have different perceptions of freedom. Nevertheless, in today’s society, African Americans live freely, women are independent, and immigrants are accepted in society. What more freedom can one possibly ask for?
The freedom of earning one’s own wage labor was also reflected in J. California Cooper’s story, Family, when Sun ran away to the north to earn wages. He did everything to make sure he had a place to sleep and food to eat. He did not care because it was nothing compared to the reality of slavery. But by working, he was able to feel the very essence of liberty for the first time. This could be seen when Cooper describes how Sun “ was paid good cause he worked good…learned all [he] could…[and he] had a future there [as he got married with his boss’ daughter]” (Cooper 125). He was able to build his own life from the fruits of his labor and participate in the market revolution as he marries the daughter. At this time, he is expected to take over the family business and be a very successful person and experience, for the first time, freedom.
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
Chitra Divakaruni wrote the essay “Live Free and Starve” to share her views on U.S. laws having to do with child labor. In her first paragraph, Divakaruni led the reader to believe that the bill passed had a positive effect on Third World Countries that allow child labor. Divakaruni took a different angle on a common problem. Instead of offering a quick, cheap solution, the author looked beneath the surface to find the root of the problem. Divakaruni knows that the children working in factories have no other choice if they want to eat another meal and live another day. She wants to end the cruelty these children are forced to live in, but she knows that boycotting child labor is not the best way to do so. Divakaruni is a credible source when
All of my life I have considered myself as a person who loves children. I enjoy playing with them, helping them, and just being around them. So when I first agreed with corporations who use child labor I shocked myself completely. After examining two articles; one “The Case for Sweatshops”, by David R. Henderson, and two “Sweatshops or a Shot at a Better Life”, by Cathy Young, I came to the conclusion that in some cases when young children work under proper conditions it can keep them out of the streets and be helpful to them and their families.
In conclusion, “Slaves No More” helps examine the destruction of slavery and the redefinition of freedom in the midst of the nation 's chaos. The book addresses an important aspect in the study of the Civil War; it also helps to analyze how slaves gain their freedom and what freedom meant to them.it also helps emphasize the effective role of slaves in the country. The book demonstrates how the emancipation changed the lives of all Americans, including both white and black.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
Think about the cotton in your shirt, the sugar in your coffee, and the shoes on your feet, all of which could be products of child labor. Child labor is a practice that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity and includes over 200 million children worldwide who are involved in the production of goods for companies and industries willing to exploit these kids for profit. Although most countries have laws prohibiting child labor, a lack of funding and manpower means that these laws are rarely enforced on a large scale. However, even for a first-world country like the United States, that has a large number of state and federal law enforcement officers, child labor is still a problem because priority is given to crimes that are more violent or heinous. Child labor must be made a priority issue because it is a global plague whose victims are physically and psychologically scarred, lack a proper education, are impoverished, and whose children are doomed to the same fate if nothing changes.
“Live Free and Starve” is an essay by Chitra Divakaruni, written in 1997 for Salon magazine. Divakaruni begins the essay apprising us of the passing of a United States bill by the House that would not permit the import of goods from countries that was using forced or indentured child labor. This made many United States citizens joyful that children in third world countries would no longer have to spend their childhood working in factories. According to Divakaruni this was not the best plan of action on the part of the United States. Child labor is an awful thing when you think about what a child is subjected to in these factories, how long it will take a child to pay off their debt to earn their freedom, and the fines or pay cuts they endure
According to UNICEF, there are an estimated one hundred and fifty eight million children aged five to fourteen in child labour worldwide. Millions of children are engaged in dangerous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, working as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. If there is nothing wrong with child labour, then why is the exploitation so secret? Do you ever wonder when you go into certain shops how a handmade t-shirt can be so cheap? Or on the other hand, products which are sold to us at extremely high prices and we assume...
“I wake up at 3am to water the plants, clean the house, go to market, cook, wash the plates, wash the clothes, iron the clothes. I return to the market three times a day. From 5pm to 9pm, they allow me to go to school. When I return, I have to wash the dishes, then I massage both my male and female employer until 1am. I only have two hours to sleep.” This is how a girl from Buikidnon, Philippines described her experience with child labour to Anti-Slavery International researchers. She is a former child domestic worker who entered domestic work at nine years old, enduring her employer’s abuse.
Child labour is an issue that has plagued society since the earliest of times. Despite measures taken by NGOs as well as the UN, child labour is still a prevalent problem in today’s society. Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child gives all children the right to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child 's education, or to be harmful to the child 's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.1 Child labour clearly violates this right as well as others found in the UDHR. When we fail to see this issue as a human rights violation children around the world are subjected to hard labour which interferes with education, reinforces