The last book that I read this summer was Evicted, by Matthew Desmond. The shines the light on the startling reality that fewer and fewer people are able to afford home ownership. Desmond writes, “Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates over 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on” (4). In the book, Desmond humanizes the eviction process and tells the story of 8 families from the eyes of the landlord and the tenant. Desmond shows the landlord’s thought process and how they are forced to survive relying on the payment of others, and Desmond shows the tenant’s struggle in order scrounge up enough money for rent whilen dealing with
The Mojave Mindset As Coretta Scott King once said, “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” In “Mojave Rats”, there is a lack of compassion in the trailer park community, which contributes to their lack of connections. Residents do not put in effort in spending time and getting to know their neighbors and instead make flash judgements, which is representative of many American communities. The short story “Mojave Rats” by Kirstin Valdez Quade explores the relationship between Monica, who offers no compassion to the people around her, her daughters Cordelia and Beatrice, and her second husband Elliot. They moved from Los Angeles to Shady Lanes RV park in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and
At one time in life you have witnessed the horror of someone littering. If not, then I am sure that you have littered yourself. During this essay a man describes his experience of cleaning up the streets of Miami and ridding them of some litterbugs. In this essay, “A Couple of Really Neat Guys,” Dave Barry uses hyperbole and clever wordplay to reveal the universal truth about littering. To reveal the rudeness of littering, Barry uses hyperbole to get his point across.
The 2000’s was a very intense decade, with the occurrence of 9/11 which led to the War in Iraq. A year after 2000, HBO released a documentary named “Bellevue, inside Out” by Maryann DeLeo. In this documentary, the viewer gets to take a look inside Bellevue Hospital located in New York City, which contains a psychiatric institution. The film captures about 12 months inside the psychiatric unit in this hospital. The documentary follows both the employees, such as the emergency room directors, psychiatrists, nurses, etc., as well as the patients admitted into the psychiatric emergency room.
Matthew Desmond’s Evicted takes a sociological approach to understanding the low-income housing system by following eight families as they struggle for residential stability. The novel also features two landlords of the families, giving the audience both sides and allowing them to make their own conclusions. Desmond goes to great lengths to make the story accessible to all classes and races, but it seems to especially resonate with people who can relate to the book’s subjects or who are liberals in sound socioeconomic standing. With this novel, Desmond hopes to highlight the fundamental structural and cultural problems in the evictions of poor families, while putting faces to the housing crisis. Through the lens of the social reproduction theory, Desmond argues in Evicted that evictions are not an effect of poverty, but rather, a cause of it.
Housing is a huge part of the economy. Everybody a certain point in their life becomes a tenant or a homeowner. Recently, I read “Evicted “written by Matthew Desmond , a story of tenants and homeowners in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Matthew narrates a story different families with various background, race, and needs. All those family faced a commonly problem which is an eviction.
In the second half of his book Evicted, Matthew Desmond continues to explore the underprivileged housing world and the social and economic strains it places on the poorest inhabitants of Milwaukee, WI. Through case studies of various families, Desmond uncovers the inherent link between victims of substance abuse, mental illness, race and ethnicity discrimination, poverty, and their subsequent housing discrimination. Although each chapter delves a little deeper into the situation of a certain individual or family, Desmond’s voice as a researcher is not present until the Epilogue.
Roald Dahl’s mystery story, “The Landlady”, takes place in Bath, England. Billy Weaver, the main character, goes on a business trip and stays at a Bed and Breakfast that he did not know anything about. During his stay he becomes to trusting of the woman that owns the home and things end up taking an unexpected turn. By using craft moves, Roald Dahl creates the lesson that people need to be cautious and aware of their surroundings.
Literary Analysis Collection 1 Have you ever thought about what decisions that you’ve made through your life? Well, it is worth thinking about over time. In the short stories “The Pedestrian” and the “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket”, and the “Ambush” all deal with the consequences of their actions. But luckily, the protagonist of these stories see’s their mistakes.
Many other short stories, such as “The Dangerous Game” , is full of detailed descriptions to pull in the audience. In this story the character Whitney explains his experience, “There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plate-glass window. We were drawing near the island then. What I felt was a--a mental chill; a sort of sudden dread” (2).
It is late afternoon and a bright sunset paints the sky a deep orange. Candle light streams through the windows of a quaint two storey home standing at the end of a long street where the street sign Bourbon Road is visible. The boards on the house are faded and parts have chipped white paint flaking away. Brick pillars sit out the front of the home, with blocks missing and crumbling away. It resembles the Kowalski and Hubbel’s abode but has a slightly upper class ambiance.
In a world where the "new" outweighs the “old,” the well being of the majority tends to come before the well being of the individual. In The Shining Houses, a short story written by Alice Munro, The “new” neighbours develop this theme, throughout the story, as they conjure up a scheme to eliminate Ms. Fullerton—the “old” neighbour—from their neighbourhood. First of all, the new neighbours introduced the theme in a smooth fashion as they started complaining about Mrs. Fullerton’s and her home. They explained to one another it was an eyesore, and that it smelled quite unpleasant. The general disdain for Mrs. Fullerton’s property was emphasized as Steve, Edith’s husband, stated that “if [he] was next door to [Mrs. Fullerton’s house], [he] would send [his] kids
The narrator asked for directions to “Men’s House” and he goes on his way afraid to look back. The narrator's rented room looks nice but he gets homesick. He eventually get over it and the next day he got dressed up “smart’ and went out to give the letters to the “important men”. After a lot of failures he was down with one letter left. He decided to write another letter and give it too Mr. Emerson’s secretary.
“The Custodian” is a short story written by Brian Hinshaw. Hinshaw writes about a janitor who works in a nursing home. The story starts off with an intriguing beginning and ends with an unpleasant surprise. To find the meaning behind this story, there needs to be an analysis conducted of the characters, plot, point of view, and theme.
East Palace, West Palace (1996) is a film made by Zhang Yuan, a renowned Chinese independent filmmaker widely known as “one of the Sixth Generation pioneers of illegal cinema” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2010, p.640). Despite international critical acclaim, the film was banned in China due to its controversial portrayal of homosexuality and being part of “an underground movement existing outside the state studio system” (Lim, 2006, p.30). This response will examine how East Palace, West Palace’s depiction of a homosexual persecuted-persecutor relationship between A Lan and Shi Xiaohua allegorizes “the relationship between the artist-intellectual and the state”, while the use of masochism serves to undermine state authority by granting the masochistic subject agency despite being in a position of weakness. (Lim, 2006, p.70).
