Poverty In The Children Of Sanchez By Oscar Lewis

The book The Children of Sanchez by Oscar Lewis is about a poor family in Mexico City. The father in the family is Jesus Sanchez, who is fifty years old and he has four children, Manual (32), Robert (29), Consuelo (27) and Marta (25). The main idea behind the book is to provide the readers with the way that such a family tends to live. For instance, even though these are five grown adults, they have to share a one-room apartment that is located in a slum tenement in Mexico City, which is one of the largest and greatest cities in Latin America. It is interesting to note that by showing us these lives, Lewis is able to depict not just the aspect of poverty, but he is able to highlight the culture of poverty that tends to exist in such areas

This culture of poverty is not just that people are poor, but most people have been living in poverty for so long that they have come to accept it as being part of their lives. Such people tend to start lacking a sense of seriousness in terms of their behaviors regarding the rules that they have to follow. People living in the culture of poverty tend to not care about how they are acting or what their role is in the society. They start believing that since they are poor and part of the culture of poverty, normal rules and societal etiquettes do not apply to them. They think that even if they break rules, they would not be punished or even if they are punished, it is something that they must learn to accept as part of their culture of poverty. People tend to get so used to the culture of poverty that they stop caring about several things that most normal people would care deeply about. They would just start to dismiss it as something that they have been facing all their lives and something that would believe they have no power over

By presenting how thy family members have lived in abject poverty, outlining their familial relationships, Lewis has been able to provide a very good and interesting look at not just how this one particular family lives but also of how many other similar families tend to live in such impoverished neighborhoods. Lewis uses anecdotal evidence the most in his book; however, he does also uses some statistics to depict how the family can be said to be living in such a problematic and challenging world. In doing so, he is able to present the lives of such people and how they struggle to find peace. Lewis also makes sure to present the story of these people as Mexicans, as it works to show how they are different from Americans and how they do not have the same opportunities that Americans do. Lewis is able to clarify that the overall economic and financial conditions in Mexico are not as good as they are in the US, which means that a similar family living in the US would not have so much trouble. This is how Lewis is able to have the American audience relate to the Sanchez family and their