Homelessness And Poverty In Flavio's Home By Gordon Parks

Is being poor truly so much worse than what it seems from the outside? Homelessness and poverty are all over the world, not only in America, and in most cases much worse than what we have seen. In two essays about poverty, two writers present descriptive depictions of a real-world problem in society. Their use of grief persuades the audience to make them feel upset for the poor and homeless.

Throughout “Flavio's Home” by Gordon Parks, Parks takes us on an adventure and shows us was it truly is like for a family to be in poverty. While visiting Catacumba, Gordon saw a young kid walking up a mountain while balancing a tin above his head. As Parks described he was “Miserably thin, naked but for filthy denim shorts. His legs resembled sticks

Once Gordon was welcomed into Flavio's home, he saw him holding a screaming baby with a huge smile on his face. After seeing that there was more than one kid, for a total of five, there was concern on how all five of these kids could live in this tiny shack along with their parents. Throughout the story of Flavio and his family, Parks uses grief for the reader to understand how bad poverty is. There was no ability for any of the kids to see a doctor, the father's business was not bringing in barely any money for the family, and there were 5 kids who were fighting for themselves during the day just to be able to eat and have water to drink. Gordan, doing an excellent job of showing how incredibly hard it is to live as a poor family, soon revealed that Flavio, the only one who really kept the family

“Poverty is getting up every morning from a dirt and illness-stained mattress. The sheets have long since been used for diapers. Living in a smell that never leaves,” explains Goodwin. Parkers first person experience gives us the ability to truly see inside the life of what it means to be homeless. While Goodwin explains how waking up dirty every morning feels, seeing people with money walk around, while all he feels is tiredness, he says that he does not want pity from anyone. Explaining how he only made twenty-two dollars a week, and not having enough to put his kids through school because it would take everything that he has, he explains that being homeless is worse than it seems. Goodwin ends his story with the statement “The poor are always silent. Can you be silent too?” Being homeless is terrible and the homeless do not want to hear about how bad it is from the people who have houses, who have a job, who have enough money to go to the store whenever they need