...In “Introduction: Getting Ready” from Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, she describes the experiment she performed in order to expose the conditions of living on minimum wage as well as accredit herself with the prerequisites for reporting on the subject. The introduction of Ehrenreich’s novel, Nickel and Dimed, was written with the intent to inform the audience of some background information that supports the rest of the book. One of the important ways she does this is by providing statistics and facts about the lives of those living on minimum wage. She does this mostly in the beginning of the intro: “were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour?”(1). In this sentence not only does she mention the sheer amount of people who are forced to live on minimum wage, but she also states the low amount that these women are being paid. By telling the audience this information she can convince the reader that the low class workers of America are not being paid enough. By using data to argue this point she is using the rhetorical device logos in her introduction....
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...I think Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed is thoroughly written in a descriptive style that informs the reader about predicaments in the lives of low-wage workers. Her purpose in this memoir is to investigate the life of working in an “unskilled labor”, as she is in fact an upper-middle-class journalist. One of many issues had to deal with health. In the book, Ehrenreich says “After two days of minor [skin] irritation, a full-scale epidermal breakdown is under way...I wake up realizing I can work but probably shouldn’t, if only because I look like a leper. Ted doesn’t have much sympathy for illness, though; one of our morning meetings was on the subject of “working through it” (87). It’s really not fair that people would rather go to work...
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...In the reading Nickel and Dimed : (not) Getting by in America, researcher Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of working and living as a part of the poor in American society. She began her research in 1998, in Key West and aimed to work and survive on the wages most unskilled workers receive in America, in order to adapt to and understand their situations. In the second reading Who Rules America, by G. William Domhoff, the author talks about power and class in the United States and how these social structures affect American society. Further on, he moves on to describe the role of democracy and the government and its influence on social stratification. He concludes that power plays a huge role in dominating society in terms of advantages,...
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...Reflection of Nickel and Dimed This experiment was an interesting challenge for the author, Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich could have just written a book about poverty and the low wage work force by collecting research from other people but instead she got out there and did the work herself. At times, especially in the first chapter, Ehrenreich would seem like she was not working hard and giving up but she eventually got over these feelings. Ehrenreich was not too picky about her choice of jobs, food, or living arrangements. I can’t imagine eating only fast food or canned meat for months. I think that the results of this experiment are extremely volatile and could have been drastically different with little change of Ehrenreich’s plan. Ehrenreich claims that she had an advantage being white, English speaking, and not having children. It would be interesting to see an experiment done to compare the results to Ehrenreich’s experiment. It was good that Ehrenreich performed many different jobs to see different experiences while doing her research. Ehrenreich’s experiment also easily proved that low wage work can be very difficult and hard work. Ehrenreich also showed the poor treatment of the workers by management who feel that they are more powerful. It was interesting to see Ehrenreich’s feeling on invisibility while working at Wal-Mart where she was only one of the many workers at the store. She did not receive any praise for her work in any place. Ehrenreich also felt very...
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...Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Carmen Arvelo Northwestern State University SOWK 3350 Barbara Pierce PHD, LMSW, ACSW March 04, 2013 Abstract The author Barbara Ehrenreich sets out on her quest to decide for herself if the working women in America are able to survive on low paying jobs. Accomplishing this will mean living on only what she makes to pay the rent, groceries and gas. The author makes up her mind to seek employment in three different cities around America, Key West, Florida, Maine and Minnesota. Her reasons for choosing each these cities varies and she realizes very quickly that making ends meet in any of these cities will not be easy to do if not impossible on a low salary. The author meets numerous people, including Holly a maid in Maine that she befriends. Ehrenreich’s view of low wage workers helps her understand their situation around the country as she comes to the realization that one cannot afford nutritious food, a protected living enviroment and provide for health insurance all on low earnings. My paper will discuss the repercussions of low wages on the working poor as well as how they are viewed by society. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America The book Nickel and Dimed begins with the author, Barbara Ehrenreich (2011), contemplating how she will take on the task of living with limited money and assets as she has a Ph.D. in Biology, but her focus became social change. Ehrenreich must ground rules for her research...
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...Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America is a novel that Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about her social experiment. She went undercover as a low-wage worker trying to live with the money she earns from work. There were rules that she have set for herself, however, she broke them throughout the experiment. If she had stuck to her rules throughout the experiment, then it could have gone a lot better and it would be more interesting. She would be able to fully experience how living in poverty would be like. As Ehrenreich starts her experiment, the first rule she had set was that “[she] could not, in [her] search for jobs, fall back on any skills derived from [her] education or usual work” (Ehrenreich, 9). Ehrenreich broke this rule when she...
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...There are usually resources available to help people in all sorts of situations. In the US, not only do American citizens have rights but immigrants have them too. Sometimes immigrants are scared and go through hard times because they don't know where to seek help. Fortunately, the help is there and is important to spread the word. If I were a counselor in Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, I would be advising George and Lucy, Barbara’s co-workers at Jerry’s Restaurant to seek help (2001). George needs to find free ESL classes and an attorney to get legal advice. Lucy needs to find medical coverage and look for housing assistance. This book is interesting because it looks at three different industries where its employees each share situations of poverty and hardships...
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...Real Life Experiment The timeless struggle between the cost of living and the income for low-wage work has made millions of working families unable to meet their basic needs. Barbara Ehrenreich investigates this struggle in her book, Nickel and Dimed. Working low-wage jobs in Florida, Maine and Minnesota as an undercover journalist, Ehrenreich gives a lively and interesting account of a low-wage worker’s life. She used first hand experiences, the lives of her co-workers, and added in facts (as footnotes). The research she did for this book was extensive. She collected the data and materials like a scientist and carefully compiled a book that shows the reader the unflattering realities that low-wage workers are faced with. She also struggled with some areas of the project and allowed her own opinions and choices to cloud her objective mind set. This project began during a lunch meeting between Ehrenreich and Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper’s Magazine. After being told that she should be the one to go into the field and research whether it is possible to sustain a living on little to no income, she thinks about it and then reluctantly says she will. (5) She explains in the first section that she was aware of the advantages she would have over the real people in her project. She had numerous advantages over her co-workers including a completed education, a car, good health, health insurance, and money to get her started. (7) This had to be the first step that she took before...
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...THE CASE ON WAL-MART: Employee Rights In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich, a social critic and journalist, embarked on a ground-breaking experiment. To understand the typical low-wage worker, she left her comfortable life and took on various jobs and attempted to survive on minimum wage in three different places in the nation. One of her stops was Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she was employed by Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer employs with approximately 1.3 million workers in this country alone. Founded in 1962, Wal-Mart was Sam Walton's vision of great customer service and was meant to be a way to lower the cost of living in America. However, it seems that the corporation chooses to forgo certain issues such as fair wages and decent healthcare for its employees, so that they may afford their low, low prices. In her New York Time’s Bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich states that “[u]nderneath those vests […] there are real-life charity cases, maybe even shelter dwellers” (175). Ehrenreich’s claim that Wal-Mart employees are dreadfully paid and mistreated are still accurate today, seven years later, as is evident by the statements of current statistics and recent articles that Wal-Mart continues to pay their employees minimum wage while the company’s CEO has a multimillion dollar salary, fails to provide decent health benefits to half of their employees causing these workers to rely on the government, and is strongly anti-union so that the company can continue to exploit...
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...NOTE: This is a published paper and should be cited as follows: Simmons, A.M. (2012). Class on fire: Using the Hunger Games trilogy to encourage social action. The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(1), 22-34. Abstract This article explores ways to utilize students’ interest in fantasy literature to support critical literacy. Focusing on Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games series (2008, 2009, 2010), the author addresses how elements of the trilogy relate to violent acts in our world, helping student understand that violence and brutality toward children is not fiction, but very real, and that they can play a role in its abolishment, just like Katniss, through social action projects. Issues such as hunger, forced labor, child soldiers, and the sex trade that appear in both the fictional series and our world are discussed, encouraging students to assess their world and advocate for change. Examples of social action projects that utilize multiple literacies are suggested as a way to inspire students take action in the community and to stand up to injustice and brutality in hopes of creating a better world and a better human race. Using popular literature to pique student interest, this article explores how to incorporate the books in the Hunger Games series into the ELA classroom to support literacy and critical goals. Class on Fire: Using the Hunger Games Trilogy to Encourage Social Action Introduction The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, comprising...
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...RESEARCH and WRITING CUSTOM EDITION Taken from: Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, Eleventh Edition by James D. Lester and James D. Lester, Jr. To the Point: Reading and Writing Short Arguments by Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener ISBN 0-558-55519-5 Research and Writing, Custom Edition. Published by Pearson Custom Publishing. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Custom Publishing. Taken from: Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, Eleventh Edition by James D. Lester and James D. Lester, Jr. Copyright © 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Longman, Inc. New York, New York 10036 To the Point: Reading and Writing Short Arguments by Gilbert H. Muller and Harvey S. Wiener Copyright © 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc. Published by Pearson Longman, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Custom Publishing All rights reserved. Permission in writing must be obtained from the publisher before any part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 0-536-97722-4 2005240359 AP Please visit our web site at www.pearsoncustom.com ISBN 0-558-55519-5 PEARSON CUSTOM PUBLISHING ...
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