Nickel And Dimed: Rhetorical Analysis

485 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Nickel and dimed analysis

In her unforgettable memoir, Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to explore the lives of the working poor under the proposed welfare reforms in her hometown, Key West, Florida. Temporarily discarding her middle class status, she resides in a small cheap cabin located in a swampy background that is forty-five minutes from work, dines at fast food restaurants, and searches all over the city for a job. This heart-wrenching yet infuriating account of hers reveals the struggles that the low-income workers have to face just to survive. In the except from Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich uses many rhetorical strategies to illustrate the conditions of the low wage workers including personal anecdotes of humiliation at interviews, lists of restrictions due to limited …show more content…

The juxtaposed contrasts that she often uses are seen explicitly in anecdotes or implicitly in conscious thoughts. Such contrasts first appear in the first paragraph. Even before Ehrenreich makes any substantial effort to join the poor working class, she is hit with this sudden unease of being recognized. At that time, it is clear that she has not relinquished her middle class status since she feels ashamed of being identified as a poor worker. In the world that the author originally belongs to, name and reputation are considered important to one’s standing in society yet in the working class realm, as Ehrenreich later finds out, one is often “unnoticed” and names are “unuttered.” Not only are names forgotten but one’s ability and education are also ignored when looking for jobs. Oblivious to the “rule” for hiring for unskilled jobs, Ehrenreich initially worries about her over-qualification but only to be shocked when she realizes the employers are not even interested. Whereas jobs for the middle class often demand higher education and past accomplishments, jobs for the low-wage workforce are simply depended simply on luck or as Ehrenreich claims “ being in the right place at the right time.” One can convey this as part of a corporate scheme to ensure the

Show More
Related

  • Serving In Florida Summary

    508 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the piece “Serving in Florida” by Barbara Ehrenreich several claims about poverty are made. At the time the piece was published in 2001, many Americans failed to accept the reality in the growing complications of poverty in the country. At that time there was not a wide variety of help for those on the poverty line. Ehrenreich embraces this idea, “There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs” (155). The poor commonly find themselves in minimum wage paying jobs, with no added benefits and harsh working standards. For many, it is difficult to overcome these conditions, especially when life provides its own burdens. Ehrenreich shows the example of her coworker Marianne’s boyfriend, and how he was laid off because of the “special costs”. A cut on his foot caused him to miss work, a low paying job and lack of benefits preventing him from providing the proper prescribed antibiotics (155). Since then the affordability of help for those on the poverty line has improved. The passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, mandated that all citizens must have healthcare coverage. A marketplace was

    Read More

  • Jared Diamond: Rhetorical Analysis

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jared Diamond makes a great and compelling argument about how inequality across the entire globe originated. The main components that were agreeing with this argument were guns germs and steel. Guns meaning the advancement in weaponry, military warfare and military sophistication. Germs meaning the harmful disease and other foul illness that wiped out humans throughout History. Then the third and final point steel, which was about the advancement in societies and the complex sophistication with their technology, which lead to building great architecture and devices that were completely impactful.

    Read More

  • Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    The author Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist, who decided to write an article on how it was to live on minimum wage. She stopped her life and began a series of trips across country to gain information for her article, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

    Read More

  • Thesis For Nickel And Dimed

    404 Words  | 1 Pages

    Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Nickle and Dimed” she explored a life as having a low wage earning by working several jobs in numerous of different places as she tempted to live off the wage she earned. Even though she had a doctorate in science she is known as a journalist and as well as muckraker. In the novel she states her journey on how she pondered how someone unskilled, uneducated, and untrained workers can survive with the minimum wage incomes. Barbara gave us real life experiences of her personal life as she had witnessed firsthand as her loved ones struggled living minimum wage jobs to provide enough utilities for her family.

    Read More

  • Book Review Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

    975 Words  | 2 Pages

    The research excerpt, “Nickel-and-Dimed” conducted by Barbara Ehrenreich, explained the day-to-day of the low-wage workforce in America. Ehrenreich conducted the experiment by immersing herself in the” world that welfare mothers are entering”, as she recalls. To commence her journey, she finds a place to live for $500 in Key West, Florida. After she is acclimated in her “sweet little place” she runs through the ads to find work. Ehrenreich finally, lands a job at Hearthside Hotel for $2.43 an hour plus tips. On the first day, she follows Gail, a waitress, to learn the tricks of the trade. She quickly feels overwhelmed by the work and learns that she is incompetent. The first problem she encounters at Hearthside Hotel are the managers she has

    Read More

  • Nickel and Dimed: Not Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich

    1410 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America, Barbara Ehrenreich gives an accurate and inside view of how the very bottom of the social strata lives, those who scrape a living from working minimum wage jobs. While there are a few discrepancies that will be discussed, Barbara gives an untold view of the individuals that live at, or below the poverty line. This paper will critically analyze Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, discuss two major themes in the book, and ultimately relate it to a few points to Political Science 204.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Nickel And Dimed

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    Millions of Americans work full-time, day in and day out, making near and sometimes just minimum wage. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them in part by the welfare claim, which promises that any job equals a better life. Barbara wondered how anyone can survive, let alone prosper, on $6-$7 an hour. Barbara moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, working in the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon realizes that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts and in most cases more than one job was needed to make ends meet. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all of its glory, consisting of

    Read More

  • Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    The biggest appeal that Ehrenreich makes is after she ends up walking out of the housekeeping job/waitress job because she cannot handle it anymore." I have failed… I don't cry, but I am in a position to realize, for the first time in many years, that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job." (Ehrenreich, 48) This is the biggest appeal because Ehrenreich is quitting on the whole project. She is basically telling the readers that it is impossible for her, a "well-off", woman to live the life of a low wage worker.

    Read More

  • Nickel and Dimed

    1817 Words  | 4 Pages

    Barbara Ehrenreich's intent in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America exhibited how minimum wage isn't enough for Americans to get by on and that there's no hope for the lower class. Her main objective was achieved by living out the life of the "working poor". During the three cases studies she worked many jobs that are worked by many that are simply striving to live day to day. The jobs she had didn't generate sufficient income to avoid or help her rise out of poverty, in fact the six to seven dollar jobs made survival considerably difficult. Enitially, she believe the jobs didn't require any skill but while on her journey she started to realize they were stressful and drained a lot of energy. In addition to that she saw it was almost impossible to get out of the rut of low paying professions once you're in. Barbra Ehrenreich moved throughout three locations attempting to prove her argument. In those states she obtained a job as a waitress, hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Not only did she learn about the low wages but also the treatment that was shown to the workers.

    Read More

  • Barbara Ehrenreich's Serving In Florida

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    Life is full of hardships, ups and downs, and everywhere in between. Barbara Ehrenreich took on this life experience of working a minimum wage job and only living off what she earned. All the work she did was the for her book Nickel and Dimed, or the excerpt from Serving in Florida. I have worked a minimum wage job and understand how hard it could be to try and live on what little you earn. In Ehrenreich’s Serving in Florida, she first expresses, “ Picture a fat person’s hell, and I don't mean a place with no food. Instead there is everything you might eat if eating had no bodily consequences- the cheese fries, the chicken-fried steaks, the fudge- laden desserts- only here every bite must be paid for, one way or another, in human discomfort” (394). At first all I could think

    Read More

  • Use of Rhetoric in Nickel and Dime by Barbara Ehrenreich

    1545 Words  | 4 Pages

    In her expose, Nickel and Dime, Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of what it is like for unskilled women to be forced to be put into the labor market after the welfare reform that was going on in 1998. Ehrenreich wanted to capture her experience by retelling her method of “uncover journalism” in a chronological order type of presentation of events that took place during her endeavor. Her methodologies and actions were some what not orthodox in practice. This was not to be a social experiment that was to recreate a poverty social scenario, but it was to in fact see if she could maintain a lifestyle working low wage paying jobs the way 4 million women were about to experience it. Although Ehrenreich makes good use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos), she is very effective at portraying pathos, trying to get us to understand why we should care about a social situation such as this through, credibility, emotion, and logic.

    Read More

  • Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed: Analysis

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    “To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else”.(221) Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Nickel and Dimed explored life as a low wage earner by working several “unskilled” jobs in different areas of the country and attempted to live off the wages she earned. She undertakes many noble trades, working in low wage and underappreciated jobs while trying to figure out how the people of this country do it every day. She also looks to examine the functional and conflict theories of stratification as they relate to the low wage jobs she pursues. The goal of Barbara was to find if she would be able to live off the money

    Read More

  • Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    Great discoveries always begin with great questions. Barbara Ehrenreich asked two great questions, “how does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled” and “how were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform, going to make it on $6 to $7 an hour” (2001, p. 12). To answer the questions, Ehrenreich embarked upon a journey to discover for herself, whether she could match income to expense as a low-wage worker. In effect, Ehrenreich tested the fundamental premise of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, also known as welfare reform, in order to determine whether those individuals formerly on welfare and largely unskilled, could earn a living wage on the minimum wage.

    Read More

  • Serving In Florida Rhetorical Analysis

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    For instance, Ehrenreich's indirect audience is the higher class of people, and Eighner's audience is the people who look down on dumpster divers, which is more than likely to be the higher class people who Ehrenreich addresses in her essay. However, although Ehrenreich and Eighner both have the same audience, Ehrenreich is more judgmental of her subject, people who work low income jobs, than Eighner is. Ehrenreich states, "He accepts my resignation with a shrug..." She states this when she is reflecting on the moment that she resigned from the diner where she was working. In this particular passage, she seems very judgmental of the boss of the diner where she worked, almost as if suggesting that people quit constantly. Therefore, in one way or another, saying that low income workers can't commit. In comparison to Ehrenreich, Eighner is more informing of his audience when it comes to people who don't necessarily make enough to live off of. In one paragraph, he states, "After all, the finding of objects is becoming something of an urban art." Because Eighner has experienced the lifestyle of low income workers, he is more appreciative of the skills they have, leading him to be more accepting of their lifestyle. Eighner uses this passage to inform his audience of the skills that 'dumpster divers' have. The way that both writers address their

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the middle of the book, Ehrenreich writes, "Maybe, it occurs to me, that I 'm getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black (p. 100)." I found this interesting because African Americans continuously face inequality due to race, which correlates with the inequalities that lower classes in society face. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich emphasizes that there are "hidden costs" to being poor, which includes those in poverty who cannot find a way out. The working poor, who Ehrenreich gets to know through work, live in hotels paying daily. These people in the book describe to Ehrenreich that that would rent an apartment, but they cannot afford the security deposit and starting costs. The working poor in the book also must buy unhealthy meals at fast-food restaurants because they cannot afford kitchen appliances or food to cook with. People suffering in poverty often believe they are stuck there and cannot get out, so they

    Read More

More about Nickel And Dimed: Rhetorical Analysis

Open Document