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Overview Of Barbara Ehrenreich´s Nickle And Dimed

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According to Katie Johnston, (2014) the working poor are “waitresses, department store clerks, and fast-food workers. They clean office bathrooms and airplane cabins, care for the elderly, and serve hors d’oeuvres at high-end fund-raisers. One in five workers in the state, the majority of them over 25, make $12 an hour or less. As employers squeeze costs, these low-wage earners frequently can only get part-time work without benefits, some with irregular schedules that make second jobs and child care arrangements difficult. They have no protections from having hours cut and they receive no severance pay if they are let go without warning. Many don’t have cars, making it hard to get to work when public transportation isn’t running. Those who …show more content…

Few have college degrees” (Johnston, K. 2014). Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickle and Dimed, left her life as a journalist and became one of the so called working poor (Ehrenreich, B. 2001). In this paper I will discuss the main issues in the first half of her book, I will explain what theoretical perspective her work fits into, how she did her research, the strengths and limitations to her approach, and describe how the American economy may look to a low wage worker.
Main Issues
First I will discuss some of the main issues Ehrenreich writes about in the first two chapters of her book Nickle and Dimed. Some of the issues that Ehrenreich mentions in her book have to do with how difficult life is for a low wage worker. She talks about the physical and mental toughness of a lot of the lower paying jobs such as waitressing, maids, and cleaners. Many of the workers can …show more content…

Her work was similar to what Karl Marx describes in his theory of alienation and exploitation. She was able to do her study on the working class by living the day to day life of a low wage worker and had great insight into their lives, except she limited herself by having added cash, a vehicle, and a rental deposit (Ehrenreich, B. 2001). After reading the first part of Ehrenreich’s book, and imagining what the low wage worker may think of the American economy I can truly believe they see the injustice between working classes rather than accepting the low paying life they are living. There truly is a huge difference between working classes, from how they work, get paid, treatment, feeling of self-worth, and everyday living

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Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America is a critically acclaimed investigative biography of a reporter going undercover to see how individuals manage to live on minimum wage across America. More specifically, Barbara was curious about how 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)? Ehrenreich developed a plan and some rules for her undercover research for finding jobs, housing, and living expenses. The research for this book covered a span of three states, Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, between spring of 1998 and summer of 2000.

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Thesis: I believe that Ehrenreich’s thesis is that no matter how hard you work or how chipper you act, it is nearly impossible to make a living for oneself in minimum wage conditions such as those of her coworkers. Narration: Narration is present on page 765 where through the narrator we are told Gail’s story about how her husband died and her what has led up to her current situation. Report: Paragraph 2 is an example of report writing where she details the types of housing in the area and the possible houses she can afford because she is being illustrative and informational about the topic of real estate in Key West. Analysis: The section on pages 771-772 is an analysis because she is breaking down the housing situations of her coworkers based upon her prediction of their salaries.

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Pathos dominates the article when Ehrenreich allows her nephews mother in law, grandchildren, and daughter to move into her house. The situation focuses on pathos because in Ehrenreich’s personal story she includes that “Peg, was, like several million other Americans, about to lose her home to foreclosure” (338). She is effective in her writing by appealing to the readers’ emotions through visual concepts and personal experiences. When I read the article, I felt emotional because the working poor are not fortunate to know if they will have a house or food the next day. I agree with Ehrenreich in which the poor are as important as the wealthy group who get more recognition.

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In Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich uses precise language to paint a picture of Holly, an underprivileged woman working at The Maids. While working at The Maids, Ehrenreich provides the audience with numerous descriptions and characteristics of Holly. First off, Holly is a twenty-three year old who feeds not only herself, but also her husband and an elderly relative; astonishingly, she manages to do so with a salary of thirty to fifty dollars per week. Specifically, Ehrenreich writes, “She is visibly unwell-possibly whiter, on a daily basis than anyone else in the state… think bridal gowns, tuberculosis, and death” (Ehrenreich 95). Furthermore, the author describes Holly’s meager eating habits by asserting,

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Jack Nguyen AP English 3 30, July 2015 Nickel and Dimed Rhetorical Strategies and Notes Thesis: Ehrenreich’s personal use of varied rhetorical strategies allowed her to divulge the working conditions and struggles of the poverty-stricken class to the readers in order to provoke them to realize that something has to be done about poverty.. First Body: What: Allusion Pg. 2, Logos Pg. 37. How & Effect: Ehrenreich uses these personal, rhetorical strategies based on her experiences as a low-wage worker in the poor working class. The effect is that Ehrenreich is able to show the readers the conditions in which the impoverished work in and the daily obstacles that they face in life; also there is an appeal to logic and a reference of a poverty idiom. Why: Ehrenreich is deliberately using these rhetorical strategies to incite the readers about the fact that changes need to be done to poverty because it is a detrimental thing to society.

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Discrimination definitely shaped Ehrenreich’s story. She had many advantages compared to others who actually live in this life style. One of her advantages was her race, another big advantage was not having any children. All these play a role in her story/ experience. She becomes aware at the end of her experiment that the living situation of minimum wage earners are nothing like those of upper class, such as herself.

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Nevertheless, she concludes that their socioeconomic class is burdened with even more events. Listing off each of her co-workers, Ehrenreich discovers the majority live in overcrowded situations, with relatives or in pay-as-you-go standards; others, like one particular co-worker share rent with people who are not of good character, but can alleviate the financial strain; finally, to her surprise, the hostess who were paid the most was living in the worst standard, in her vehicle (Ehrenreich, 20-21). This is one of the focal points of Ehrenreich’s investigation: while some might obtain “aid” from the government, it does not prevent consequences that the middle class does not see. As Ehrenreich discovers from Gail’s breakdown of payments for surviving by herself versus staying with her sexually harassing roommate, she beings to understand the financial discrimination that the poor

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One of the best-selling authors, Barbara Ehrenreich, in her narrative essay, “Serving in Florida,” describes her personal experience working in a local restaurant called Jerry’s. Ehrenreich’s purpose is to attach importance to the low-wage America workplace. Using rhetorical strategies such as negative diction, simile, images, and pathos, Ehrenreich attempts to raise public awareness of the low-wage workers’ life in her readers. Firstly, Barbara Ehrenreich exploits connotation of words and simile to emphasize the difficult life of the lower class.

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The article talks about poverty within america and the issues and resolutions connected to the economy. In “It is Expensive To Be Poor” Ehrenreich claim is that people in poverty are not in that situation because of self habits but because they simply do not have money at the moment. she explains that anyone

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