In Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay titled “On Compassion” Ascher considers the concept of compassion by utilizing her own encounters with the homeless as a vehicle to make her argument. In her argument, she interprets compassion as an abstract concept, and portrays empathy as a building block to compassion; making the argument that to be a more tolerant society one must first learn empathy in order to demonstrate true compassion. When analyzing Ascher’s rhetoric, her style, diction and rhetorical devices reveal a skeptical tone and serve a greater purpose in appealing to the reader’s sense of ethos and pathos. Namely, Ascher’s use of first-person narrative and word choice like “we” appeals to the reader’s sense of ethos, which eventually builds
House for the Homeless: A Place to Hang Your Hat, written by Ivana Nikolic, is an essay about the habits and behaviors of homeless people at a shelter called the Ramsey House. Through her field research Ivana learned about the homeless people’s daily rituals and behaviors. In the following paragraphs, I will illustrate for you examples of these rituals and behaviors. Their evening ritual begins standing outside the Ramsey House while they wait for the doors to open at 6:45 p.m. Next to the shelter there was a bus stop and a health care center.
A hardship that many people have to endure is poverty. The characters in the short stories, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank Mccourt and The Street, by Ann Petry, both experience living in impoverished conditions. In the story The Street, Petry shows the life of a single mother who lives through the struggles of being poor. In another story portraying poverty, Angela’s Ashes, the author uses kids to paint the image of indigence. These kids are burdened with the task of caring for themselves.
Criminal Homeless Imagine yourself without a job and receiving a final note from your bank stating that you only have a week to dislodge. In consequence, you become homeless as a bug of society and if you sleep in any bench or under a bridge, you will end up in jail. Many people have been suffering such cruel reality due to their poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich, a political activist and author in her essay “Is it Now a Crime Being Poor?” discusses the problems of the US correctional system about the treat of homeless people. She explains how they are sent to jails for minor crimes.
In Analyzing Parts of “My Daily Dives in the Dumpster” In the essay “My Daily Dives in the Dumpster,” Lars Eighner—an educated yet homeless individual—recounts his experience as a scavenger who seeks for his basic necessities in dumpsters. On his journey of survival in a penniless condition, Eighner has acquired important life skills and most importantly, gained valuable insights about life and materialism. Throughout his essay, Eigher employs deliberate word choice, a didactic tone, and a logical organization to convey that there is no shame in living “from the refuse of others” (Eighner) and to emphasize that materialistic possessions do not guarantee a fulfilled, happy life.
In Jeremy Waldron’s “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” Waldron presents the argument that homeless individuals are less free than those with homes and other material resources. Waldron’s argument is based around the notion that every action must be done somewhere, and if a homeless person is not free to be anywhere (be it other’s private property or public property) then they are not free to do anything. In what follows, I will use Robert Nozick’s description of a free society in his “The Entitlement Theory of Justice,” to first argue that Waldron adequately defends his contestation that homeless people are less free than those with homes and other material resources because of their need to be heavily dependent on the government as central distributors for their income and physical properties. I will then describe how a homeless person’s inability to effectively partake in voluntary actions and exchanges with other individuals is due to their inherent lack of goods and education. In the third section, I will refute the idea that homeless people are equal to those who are not homeless, as argued by Friedrich Hayek in “The Atavism of Social Justice.”
According to the most recent statistics from the United Nations intergovernmental organization, there is, alarmingly, about a hundred million people of which are without a home throughout the world. And concerningly, it is found that myriads of people who are free of financial hardships feel that it is not their business or responsibility to help the penniless. As Anna Quindlen has stated in her essay, “Homeless”, the majority of society is choosing to ignore those sleeping on the hard pavement of the sidewalk, merely going around the problem, instead of facing it and endeavoring to find a solution, or even contributing help on a small-scale. A prime example of this is included within the short story of “What Do Fish Have To Do With Anything?”,
Homelessness is not a new issue as it has already existed for many years ago and the existence of homeless people is often being ignored. The reasons why they end up sleeping on the streets is largely because of individual factors (Main, 1998), which is contributed by structural factors (Cyndy Baskina, 2007). It is unsure whether homeless people choose to end their lives in this way or are among the victims of situations? Many researchers contribute homelessness to structural factors but advocates of human rights debunk this and highlights that the main reason for homelessness is due to mostly individual
In his seminal article in the New Yorker recounting a story of a homeless alcoholic man, Gladwell (2006) observed that homelessness costs the taxpayers considerably and focus ought to be given to housing provision and supportive care. According to Gladwell (2006),
These questionings of the reasoning behind helping the homeless in the two anecdotes enable the readers to contemplate the answers themselves without Ascher having to plainly address them. Ascher also includes slightly less important rhetorical questions to emphasize various points. When Ascher states that “the owner of the shop, a moody French woman, emerges from the kitchen with a steaming coffee in a Styrofoam cup, and a small paper bag of...of what? Yesterday’s bread? Today’s croissant?”
Homelessness is a product of social inequalities. Karl Marx stated that the capitalist society produces two prominent classes which are in conflict with each other, bourgeoisie and proletariats. The bourgeoisie are the oppressors who own the means of production and the proletariats are the oppressed workers who labor for the bourgeoisie. Capitalism is distinguished not by privilege but instead by individuality of property ownership and that those who create the conditions of the oppressed group express this power in the form of laws that function to serve the bourgeoisie’s interests (Marx, 2004, p.129).
What is solitude? Solitude is the time a person spends alone, hopefully the person is doing something that they enjoy. Sometime I take time out my day to write poetry alone in quiet room. While being alone, I am able to express myself in ways that is therapeutic. I look forward to being alone, it’s like my reward after completing everything else.
Kenney Morales Prof Peters English-101 “Homelessness” Imagine you are walking in a city, and amongst the crowded street, you notice a man. He isn’t walking, just sitting down out of sight. He doesn’t make a sound. However, he stands out the most out of everyone else.
In her memoir, the Glass Castle, Jeanette Wall’s discusses and explores many different concepts that affected her family dynamic and her development. One of these matters is homelessness. Individuals are able to live in a stable environment, sleep in a warm bed, wear clean clothes, and enjoy proper meals; but not all of these basic needs are enjoyed by everyone and their families. This undesirable situation is portrayed in Jeannette Walls novel. Jeannette vividly depicts homelessness by exploring its causes, its impact on daily life, and its effect on her family.
The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, authored by Nels Anderson, offers an account of the behaviors, choices, relationships and living situations of the homeless in 1920’s Chicago. This study, conducted for the Chicago Council of Social Agencies, provides a platform to voice first hand accounts of the adventures and the hardships of the vagrant life. Born to a Swedish immigrant father and housemaid mother, Anderson spent much of his childhood moving around; from The West, to an Indian reservation, to Hobohemia, he moved 10 times over the course of 10 years. Anderson seeks answers to the many questions surrounding homelessness because he grew up in a milieu that only knew the vagrant life. Once he left high school, Anderson joined the
