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Small Cities In Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

1936 Words8 Pages

Small town’s makeup about 10% of the United States population. Wuthnow once said, “The nation's 15,000 small towns are sometimes portrayed as idyllic places that are "the real America" and sometimes as dying communities to be escaped at the first opportunity” (Michael, Hotchkiss. Par. 2). Wuthnow is a Professor of Social Sciences and was a professor of sociology What he said is completely true because a small town can be conveyed as a wonderful and happy place but it can also be a place of terror, filled with drama and a place where people just want to get away from. A small town can be defined as 25,000 people or less. In a small town if an individual does something bad, everyone knows about it. Compared to a city gossip and rumors get around a lot more slowly than they do in a small town. In a small town, everybody knows everybody. Not only is gossip a problem in a small town but so is crime. Also, compared to a city, most small town people are low or minimum wage workers, such as factory workers or someone who works in a convenient store. In a small town, many people have money problems and cannot live off of the minimum wage they get. Many people have to get …show more content…

This is about a young girl who was involved in two murders and was found guilty. This novel reflects with the small town problems theme because when this young girl was in trial she was falsely accused by a boy who went against her in trial who she later ended up marrying. He falsely accused her because of what he thought was the real story. This proves that rumors and stories can be twisted in so many way because every time the story is told from one person to another the story changes. The setting of this story is extremely important because it took place in the eighteen hundreds. When at trial in this time judges and the public did not pay attention to the false accusations that could be made towards someone who is on

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The solution to the minimum-wage problem that haunts American workers in the 21st century is to strive for lower everyday expenses rather than for a higher minimum wage. The renowned author Barbara Ehrenreich, in her informational novel Nickel and Dimed, tells the story of how she performed a social experiment by working several minimum wage jobs, while living a lifestyle of a low-wage worker. In her novel, Ehrenreich concludes that minimum wage workers “in good health” can “barely support [themselves]” (199). Even though Ehrenreich earned “$1039 in one month,” at the end of the month she only had “$22 left over” as she had to spend “$517” on food and gas, and “$500” to pay her rent (197). As evident, Ehrenreich’s wage is not the cause of her

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Accusations were even being made solely in an attempt to get something from the person being accused, like their land. Eventually, it got to the point where it was simply one man’s word against another’s and there was no way of verifying what was or was not

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Lindsey Scaparo Nickel and Dimed Essay Surviving off of a minimum wage job in America is a very difficult task to accomplish. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, created an experiment in which she decided to leave her normal life to discover just how hard it is to live off of minimum wage. Ehrenreich made many discoveries during her experiment, most of which contributed to the assertion “On (Not) Getting By in America.” The experiment that Ehrenreich undertook involved her working different minimum wage jobs in three cities.

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Because the cost of living has welkin rocketed, it has become virtually infeasible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be exorbitant. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families salubrity. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than a moiety of his or her family 's weekly earnings.

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