Barbara Ehrenreich employed the use of humor multiple times in Nickel and Dimed; it was perhaps her most frequently used rhetorical device. Ehrenreich was trying to portray the tragedy and heartbreak of the situation by using that sort of hopeless, sardonic humor. She also used her humor as a way to camouflage topics that would otherwise be off-limits. Although some of the humor included in the narrative may have seemed distasteful, it all had a purpose and was rarely used inappropriately.
The majority of her witty remarks were used in a sardonic way. This was to present the hopelessness of her situation. On page 109, Ehrenreich speaks of how unskilled her job really is. "But why complain about not being paid when those people at the Buddhist monastery pay with their own money to do the same kind of work?". Ehrenreich continues to sarcastically illustrate the hopelessness of her position on page 151 when she describes the hotels in which she is forced to stay in. "To say that some place is the worst motel in the country is, of course, to set oneself up for considerable challenge. I have encountered plenty of contenders in my own travels--the one in Cleveland that turned into a brothel at night, the one in Butte where the window looked out into another room. Still, the Clear view Inn leaves the competition in the dust." Her condescending and ridiculing tone leaves no doubt that she is using sarcasm to help paint a clearer picture. Humor turned out to be a very successful way in illustrating just how poor her living conditions were throughout her journey. Finally, on page 160, Ehrenreich continues on her sarcastic path. "Tonight, I had the ne sensation, Survivor, on CBS, where "real people" are struggling to light a ...
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...to make the reading experience more enjoyable and entertaining. Barbara Ehrenreich implemented humor to add cohesiveness and make connections for the reader. Instead of making a brilliant point and it being completely missed by the reader, she included humor to tie up the loose ends for her audience. Finally, Ehrenreich added humor to remind her audience that she still had a lot of depth as a person. She knew that her brilliance may have been lost while her audience experience her working low wage jobs, so she added tactful humor to flaunt her writing style. This levity for the hopelessness of the situation never went too far. Because all of her wit had a place and a purpose, it can all be categorized as completely appropriate humor.
Works Cited
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and dimed: on (not) getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. Print.
...y (or don't) in low-wage jobs in the United States. To perform this, she exhausted several months finding and operational low salary jobs while living on the budgets those jobs permitted. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805063889/102-7245049-5615318?vi=glance) References Kathy Quinn, Barbara Ehrenreich on Nickel and Dimed, http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/Documents/Ehrenreich.html Scott Rappaport, 'Nickel and Dimed' author Barbara Ehrenreich to speak, http://www.ucsc.edu/currents/02-03/01-27/lecture.html Spotlight Reviews, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805063889/102-7245049-5615318?vi=glance The Connection, http://archives.theconnection.org/archive/2001/06/0625a.shtml The Labor Lawyer, www.bnabooks.com/ababna/laborlawyer/18.2.pdf Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Americam www.growinglifestyle.com/prod/0805063889.html
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.
The author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, began her experiment in Key West because she lived near there. Then she moved to Portland, ME since it was mostly white. She finished her investigation in Minnesota, where she thought there would be a pleasant stability between rent and wages. From the beginning, she ruled out high profile cities as a result of the high-rent and the lacking amount of jobs. As a secretive journalist, she related the near poverty experience to a life long ago when she was a child or raising her own children, as a result she endured the crushing feeling of anxiety. She knew she had a home to return to and her savings to fall back on therefore, the feeling of anxiety would not be experienced
In the novel Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehnreich, there are many hurtles she must overcome to experience the life of a low income worker. She sets some ground rules for herself, such as always having a car, and starting out with a certain amount of money for her down payment on an apartment. Although the rules are doable, she admits that she broke all of the rules at least once. Even though Barbara didn't hold to her original plan, she was still able to reveal her appeals clearly.
?). Drug use and abuse has become a widespread issue within the United States. One of its most troubling aspects being the abuse of pharmaceutical and prescription drugs, painkillers raising the most concern. Drugs such as Oxycontin, Ambien, and Xanax are being prescribed by doctors and given to the public and then being misused, causing more harm than good. ADD SOURCE THAT EXPLAINS THE MANIFESTATION OF THIS. Barbara Ehrenreich, an American author and sociologist explores this very problem in her book, Nickel and Dimed. When talking about a worker’s use of medication, Ehrenreich claims that, “Unfortunately, the commercial tells us, we workers can exert the same kind of authority over our painkillers that our bosses exert over us. If Tylenol doesn’t want to work for more than four hours, you just fire its ass and switch to Aleve”(25). In other words, Ehrenreich is stating how the media is pushing drugs onto the working class and through the use of personification she illustrates how workers identify themselves with the medications they are taking. Employees will opt for the most efficient medication in order to be efficient themselves, which reduces them to a less than human kind of being for their employer’s benefit. If any of the employees fail to meet the expectations set for them, a new recruit from the company’s “pool of cheap labor” can easily replace them. Pharmaceutical and prescription drug abuse is becoming a growing concern amongst low wageworkers because of their variety, easy access, and social acceptance.
Ehrenreich’s views throughout the book do not help her with getting the reader to agree with her. Her use of humor is more offensive than funny. She put herself in a position where she didn’t go into this project open-minded. She kept her own views, which got in the way of seeing people for who they are. She sarcastically makes fun of her place if work, when she didn’t out herself in the place of the people there. She also mocks people to the extent where it isn’t just a little side comment, but a rude, biased statement. Ehrenreich use of humor in Nickel and Dimed contains too much of an opinionated twist.
First, the article uses specific types of humor to keep the reader engaged: mockery and sarcasm. The author writes with mockery and sarcasm throughout the whole article, but there is a specific example of both devices used together at the end of his writing: “Why should I pay thousands of dollars to have my spine realigned with physical therapy when I can
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job.” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who must be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum wage jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream. A big disadvantage that the lower class has compared to the wealthy is a lack of quality education.
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
In today’s society, the question of minimum wage is a large political topic. Many people argue that it is impossible to live on a minimum wage lifestyle. In her novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into this issue. In an experiment in which she mimics the life of a single woman, she moves into the low-wage workforce in three different cities in America. Within these cities, she attempts to make a living off of low-wage work and records her experiences, as well as the experiences of the true low-wage workers around her. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich utilizes both vivid imagery and data in order to persuade the audience to agree that the low-wage lifestyle is truly un-livable.
She argues that a positive outlook will not make one cancer free, give one a job, make one wealthy or do you constantly happy. The beginning of the book made me realize that the balance of positive and negative thinking is the most important life lesson. She shows the readers how staying positive through her battles of cancers is going to make it easier, but Ehrenreich is trying to explain to the readers that it is okay to be negative. Ehrenreich gives the readers more of a negative side and thinks being positive is beginning to harm us. I can understand why she was thinking so negative while she was battling cancer, she was told by a cancer patient, “I know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster and it will have shortened my life” (Ehrenreich 43). Ehrenreich sure did give the audience a way of understanding as to how people rely too much on positivity. She tells us that one will need to
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, published in 2001 by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book about an author who goes undercover and examines lives of the working lower class by living and working in similar conditions. Ehrenreich sets out to learn how people survive off of minimum wage. For her experiment, she applies rules including that she cannot use skills acquired from her education or work during her job search. She also must take the highest-paying job offered to her and try her best to keep it. For her search of a home, she has to take the cheapest she can find. For the experiment, Ehrenreich took on low-wage jobs in three cities: in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota.
Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes
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
Humor and laughter can benefit every person's mental health. According to Melinda Smith and Jeanne Segal, who are the authors in the Help Guide Organization, " Laughter makes us feel good. And the good feeling that we get when we laugh remains with us even after the laughter subsides. Humor helps us keep a positive, optimistic outlook through difficult situations, disappointments, and loss." They are right, laughter make us feel good even when the laughter subsides. The reason why it still feels good even when the laughter is gone is because our minds keep replaying the scenario over and over again so that our mind will be able to relax, reduce the stress and the tension that is in our mind and our body. They also said that humor helps us overlook