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Reflections on empathy
Reflection on empathy
Reflection on empathy
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1.) Rhetorical Analysis – pages 1 – 19 (Introduction and part of Chapter 1) Barbara Ehrenreich’s use of logos in order to gain the reader’s support and approval was prevalent throughout this section. She clearly outlines her credibility and aptitude in the introduction of her novel - she mentions her education as well as statistical facts about hourly wages in the United States and how they will relate to her experiment. She points out her “…PhD in biology, (which she) didn’t get by sitting at a desk and fiddling with numbers” and how “According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, in 1998 it took an hourly wage of $8.89 to afford a one-bedroom apartment…the odds against a typical welfare recipient’s landing a job at such a ‘living wage’ were about 97 to 1.” Through this, the reader understands that the author has an advanced amount of knowledge on the subject she will be covering throughout the novel. Feeling as if there will be no need to question her findings or conclusions (due to her vast educational background and the research she put in), the audience is much more susceptible and therefore predisposed to Ehrenreich’s arguments, making it easier for her to make her case. Barbara also uses a heavy hand with the allusions in this section – “The whole thing would be a lot easier if I could just skate through it like Lily Tomlin in one of her waitressing skits, but I was raised by the absurd Booker T. Washingtonian precept that says: If you’re going to do something, do it well.” She tries to establish an emotional connection with the reader – it might have worked on me if I knew who Lily Tomlin was, though understandably she wrote this novel for a different age set – that explains a part of her good character. She shows ... ... middle of paper ... ...sed the reforms. This leaves the poor to essentially fend for themselves. After reading this novel, I agree with her argument. Barbara tried to stick as close to the real life scenario as possible, but periodically she would fall back into her safety net; the women into whose shoes she pretends to step cannot. This goes to show that even when she “cheated” every once in a while – laptop still in tow, a bank account at her disposal in times of emergency, the tendency to switch cities once one becomes too much to handle– she had a difficult time managing to survive based on her wages alone, and so it must be that much harder for the people who do not have a fall-back plan. We all tend to blame the unemployment rate for poverty, and politicians are always trying to assuage the public by thinking of new proposals to reduce it, but the real culprit seems to be wages.
Like most people whom conduct experiments, Ehrenreich must first establish credibility of her knowledge of this subject. She does this in her introduction in numerous ways. Ehrenreich comes out saying that she has a Ph.D in biology but has a fancy for writing. She starts off with her exposure to low wage paying jobs by using her sister and her husband a companion for over a decade. Her sister, who use to work for the phone company as a sales representative, a factory work and receptionist who described it her experiences as “the hopelessness of being a wage slave”. Her husband use to work for $4.50 an hour in a warehouse before he was fortunate enough to land a good paying job with the union workers the Teamsters.
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.
Linda Gordon's article is thoughtful, insightful and highly relevant. As governments slash poverty relief programs at all levels and as welfare-bashing reaches an all-time high, it is instructive to take a step back and look at how the current system developed.
There are several inconsistencies about the situations that Ehrenreich placed herself in and the real li...
The American Dream is attainable by each and every one of us. The American Dream is the idea that everyone should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and determination. Every successful person living today had to work hard for their position. They climb the ranks until they got to where they stand today. Everyone could become successful and live the American dream as long as they work very hard starting at a young age into adulthood and study and perform well in school. They must study for school and get a good education. In the book “Nickel and Dimed”, Barbara is struggling to get along because she is surviving off jobs that require little to no education and experience.
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
The people that David Shipler interviewed are the type of people seen every day working at restaurants, Wal-Mart, and gas stations. They do not fit into the prejudice description of mooching welfare recipients. They are people on the edge of the poverty line that are affected by a multitude of issues that snowball into a lifetime of a constant debt and crisis. Shipler studies these working po...
Barbara Ehrenreich's, "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America", is a book that strives to change the way America perceives its working poor. Incorporated is a journal of the time spent by the author, with her identity and Ph.D concealed, working in order to discover whether she could support a basic life style from earning minimum wage. This book brings to light general problems such as stress in the work place, lack of proper benefits, and how what was merely an experiment for Ehrenreich, is a real detriment for many others. Documented from 1998-2000, Ehrenreich finds cheap residencies and works various employment positions paying between $6-$7 an hour all while assessing her findings. In working as a waitress in Florida, a maid in Maine, and a sales clerk in Minnesota, Ehrenreich soon discovers that even the "lowliest" of occupations require exhausting and strenuous efforts rewarded by a wage that barely covers living expenses and everyday expenditures.
Furthermore it creates a rhetoric that states it is the responsibility of the middle class to change the circumstances of those in need. This makes those in the middle class have a pressure they did not choose, and also those in poverty an expectation that they might not otherwise have had. Other than when Beegle states, “If the teacher had been exposed to Poverty 101, she would have the skills needed to find out what motivators made sense to me (342),” she makes no other suggestions on just how exactly the middle class would end the cycles of
to make ends meet, support themselves, and their families. In the novel, Nickel and Dimed (2015), Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, does a great job going into the the workforce to be employed as a low wage worker, plus acquiring information about how low wage workers make ends meet. Ehrenreich’s reasoning to do so is for research purposes. Although she has a Ph.D., from the
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
In this book, Ehrenreich tries to work in three different places to see what it is like to work as a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich worked as a server in Florida, housekeeper in Miami, and sales person in Minnesota, and still she didn’t make enough money to live comfortable. As she says, “Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don’t need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rent too high”(Ehrereich’s 199). She notices how hard it is for poor people to try to survive when they have to work with a minimum
Barbara Ehrenreich is a brave and amazing author. Nickel-and-Dimed is informative, entertaining, and influential. I enjoyed reading about a white woman trying to endow a life that is all I know. Barbara's experiment exposed sexism, classism, and racism in the American workplace amongst other reasons why working for someone else is dreadful.
perceive the novel in the rational of an eleven-year-old girl. One short, simple sentence is followed by another , relating each in an easy flow of thoughts. Gibbons allows this stream of thoughts to again emphasize the childish perception of life’s greatest tragedies. For example, Gibbons uses the simple diction and stream of consciousness as Ellen searches herself for the true person she is. Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining.
My father began his trenching business in the second half of the 1960's. Business was changing in our area and he wisely saw the need to secure a more reliable source of income for his family. Housing starts were booming, yet, even the most skilled builders, had no experience in the mechanical digging of footings; the long narrow holes in the ground, necessary for the pouring of concrete foundations. This is how the middle class built their hopes and dreams. My father saw opportunity.