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Summary Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed

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As a reader reads Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed on (Not) Getting by in America, they get an insight on what it is like to live a low income life. Ehrenreich proposes the argument in the introduction that poverty is a serious matter and just because one has a job does not mean they are not considered poor. She wants to persuade us to realize that American is not the land of opportunity as promised and portrayed and there are regular people who are struggling to live a comfortable life. Throughout her book she mentions her experiences with living on minimum wage, the hiring process, and how she felt being put in that position. After reading Ehrenreich’s book I am thoroughly persuaded.
I know from personal experience that it is a rough life without being able to get educated and find a high paying job. The minimum wage is not high enough for people to make a living off of if needed. For example, Colleen, one of Ehrenreich’s coworkers at the hotel in Maine says, “I don’t mind, really, because I guess I’m a simple person, and I don’t want what they …show more content…

While she was working for The Maids in Maine she claims, “The hands-and-knees approach is a definite selling point for corporate cleaning services like The Maids. […] A mop and a full bucket of hot soapy water would not only get a floor cleaner but would be a lot more dignified for the person who does the cleaning. But it is this primal posture of submission—and of what is ultimately anal accessibility—that seems to gratify the consumers of maid services.” (84). I agree with her, being on your hands and knees puts you in a vulnerable position and makes one feel used. Also, when she says, “… seems to gratify the consumers of maid services”, it makes it sound like the customers of The Maids like seeing women on their hands and knees cleaning for them which is terrible in

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The first chapter of Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Serving in Florida” presents the social and economic challenges that unskilled laborers faced in the U.S. Barbara’s research in Florida was a clear picture of how hard and difficult is to live with low wages, and she refers how the lives of each class of society differs from each other. Ehrenreich compares her life when she worked and lived as middle class person to the life as a poor class in the society. The book Nickel and Dimed demonstrates fairly conflict theory (inspired by Marx and Weber).

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Logically, it is what she gets paid to do: part of being a maid is to take care of menial and unpleasant tasks so that her master and mistress do not have to be troubled with doing it. As the quotation reveals, there is also a symbolism,

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Commentary On Nickel And Dimed

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My article deals with the study of society and social interaction of the Middle Class and how they survived on a Nickel and Dimed. In our text (n) 2, (pg. 42, paragraph 2) the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich brought the two stories together by research, that it is, impossible to make it on minimum wage work. The journalist observed in her study the mindset of the working Middle Class people, their persistence to make ends meet, to take care of their household, family and the will to make thing change. The “Middle Class” an aimless expression applied to those who is not on the system of welfare. In the United States certain development changed the past three decades, due to after World War II, the benefits of growth, and money making flow to

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Nickel And Dimed: Rhetorical Analysis

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Minimum wage has always been a difficult topic to talk about in political situations with questions about increasing or decreasing it forever on the ballot. In today’s economic state there has been an increase of the minimum wage in several states such as California; which has caused a debate on the national level of how much the lower class can live on. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book she tries out low wage living and documents it in Nickel and Dimed, in her opinion it's barely possible to survive on low wages for even one person. To show this she employs conversational and concrete diction to show the difficulties of living two lives that are at different poles of the economic scale and the ignorance of both classes to those besides themselves with a confusion of audiences.

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