Summary Of Live Free And Starve By Chitra Divakaruni

In her article “Live Free and Starve,” Chitra Divakaruni explains why the United States House should not have passed the bill which prohibits the importation of products from factories where child labor is used. As a consequence, she mentions this bill will negatively affect the lives and livelihood of children and their families in Third World countries. Divakaruni uses multiple persuasive appeals by providing a personal anecdote and by using multiple examples, which enables the reader to relate to an emotional experience of how this bill will adversely affect these children. Divakaruni opens her argument by seeming to agree with the bill. She writes, “My liberal friends applauded the bill,” (428) stating that the bill was a triumphant advance

Thus, she uses ethos to further her argument. She tells an example of when she was a girl living in Calcutta, India. There was a child named Nima from an ancestral village who needed to find work in order to help his family, so Divakaruni’s mom hired him as a servant. The working conditions were favorable and this employment allowed this child to support his family. By using this example, the author not only appeals to the reader emotionally, but she also demonstrates that the bill is not applicable in all situations and other cultures. First, by the author’s use of ethos, the reader feels compassion towards this child and his pursuit to support his family. The way in which the author presents the anecdote causes the reader to want the child to succeed; this indirectly brings the reader to support child labor to some extent. Second, this example disproves the notion presented by the bill that all child labor is bad and should be abolished. It provides an exception to this idea, which then proves the argument for the bill wrong and points out a faulty reasoning in the

Some could say that this story would make Divakaruni biased and culturally predisposed to accept this form of employment. However, she has avoided this issue by intermixing frequent concessions throughout every argument, keeping her American audience in mind. The effect of her balancing act has allowed her to include in this story toward the end. This brief story gives the reader a name and a face for one of these child laborers, a well-treated child named Nimai who “ate the same food that we children did and was given new clothes,” (249) and was encouraged to “learn to read and write”