Nickel and Dimed is a unique analysis being that the author uses herself as the “experimental guinea pig. Throughout Ehrenreich’s book, she proves this belief to essentially be a myth. One of the bigger issues with being homeless is finding a stable job and source of income. In the meantime, low-wage workers are made to feel shame and are constant targets of suspicion, while at the same time are becoming increasingly invisible to upper-class people, who share few of their spaces and so rarely interact with them. I think that a lot of these government programs are helpful in meeting some of the daily needs of those living in poverty, but I also think that one of the biggest needs that needs to be met is to stop the negative stereotypes and prejudices we have about those who are living in poverty, and I’m not sure I believe that’s something a government run program can do In our American Minorities course this semester we have defined prejudice and discrimination in the following ways; Prejudice is a negative attitude that rejects and entire group and discriminations is a behavior that deprives a. group of certain rights or opportunities. Analysis of the American Reality, Possibility, and Dream found in "Nickel and Dimed" and "The Outsiders" Conflict Theory in Nickeled and Dimed Stethoscope by direct observation alone he proposed to shade off, by painting, the guitar do some research and action discussion. ” Even when Ehrenreich was successfully holding down two jobs in Maine, the money she was making wasn’t enough to account for the small unexpected expenses she ran up against, let alone something like health insurance. Ed Fleming Rhetorical Analysis Paper English 102 Thurs Hybrid In Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by In America" we read about a middle aged journalist undertaking a social experiment of the greatest magnitude. Medicare and Medicaid were developed to provide aid to the aging and poverty stricken communities, and multiple food programs were put into place for different types of people needing assistance. Nickel and Dimed Literary Analysis By Nnamdi Nwaneri English 1111 03 Research Writing in the Disciplines October 14, 2014. Special attention was paid to developing programs for America’s children and youth. She ends up staying in the Blue Haven Motel, which has low-cost apartments to rent by the week in the off-season. The Economic Opportunity act and The Economic Development act began to earnestly work a provided more jobs to both rural and urban communities. We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. The events related in the book took place between spring 1998 and summer 2000. Irony is embedded in several places within Ehrenreich's book. She finally tries to stir up union feeling among her coworkers, though this is mainly a halfhearted effort that only has the effect of making her see how other employees are also struggling to survive on their Wal-Mart wages. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Nickel and Dimed written by Barbara Ehrenreich. Individuals and Corporate Rhetoric. Barbara starts in Key West. Analysis. Nickel and Dimed Analysis just from $13,9 / page. In the book however, we saw Barb practically chasing her tail to try and get some food assistance, and after hours of phone calls she eventually ended up with a basket of what sounded like expired leftovers from Sam’s Club, not anything the government actually paid for, or anything of real nutritional value. She speculates what it would be like to actually try to live on the minimum wage, and says that some enterprising journalist should try to do it—not thinking that the editor will say it should be her. Her time at The Maids comes to a climax when Holly, a team leader, grows dizzy and faint and injures herself at one of the houses, but refuses to rest, since she doesn’t want to waste the manager Ted’s time and is afraid of losing her job. In sort of an odd way, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. Critical Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed 1115 Words 5 Pages Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, published in 2001 by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a book about an author who goes undercover and examines lives of the working lower class by living and working in similar conditions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Retrieved from https://graduateway.com/nickel-and-dimed-analysis/, This is just a sample. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America has three main parts, with a preceding Introduction and two subsequent sections: Evaluation and Afterword. If you are a healthy individual how can find at least two entry-level job positions run by companies who are willing to work around your schedule, and you’re also able to find affordable housing and transportation close to these job sites, then maybe it’s possible to make a better life for yourself. Labor. In case you can’t find a sample example, our professional writers are ready to help you with writing It’s also required several times for Barb to let the company test her for illegal drug use. After some internet-based research, she is convinced that there will be a comfortable correspondence between rent and wages. Chapter 3 Summary. The stereotypes that 3 come with being homeless often discourage employers to consider hiring someone who is living in that condition. And because they receive government assistance their hard work is ignored and they are simply viewed as lazy nuisances who are mooching off the middle classes’ tax dollars, not an oppressed minority group. Even with tips, she’s not making much more than minimum wage. Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, describes the experiences the author went through when she forfeited her good life and went undercover so as to see for herself how it feels to work for an hourly wage of $6 to $7. Ehrenreich took an immersive approach to her research: she worked in low-wage jobs, such as food service and housecleaning, in order to better understand these workers’ lives. A single parent may hold down two minimum-wage paying jobs, but still need a little help to make ends meet. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. You can get your custom paper from We’re the ones who have the opportunity to help others see that a person living in poverty is oppressed by society, and we need to change the way we think about him or her. Shame and Solidarity. Analysis of nickel and dimed essay for movie review sites. In modern day America, Homelessness, and the stereotypes associated with being homeless, is one of the larger problems social workers are working to help with. Hire a subject expert to help you with Essay about Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. It seemed like these homeowners are just waiting for one of their priceless heirlooms to disappear. Help, Use multiple resourses when assembling your essay, Get help form professional writers when not sure you can do it yourself, Use Plagiarism Checker to double check your essay, Do not copy and paste free to download essays. There, she befriends a teenaged Czech dishwasher named George. (2016, Aug 11). But I assume that what the question was getting at was whether or not those living in poverty are viewed as a minority group by America’s contemporary culture. Struggling with distance learning? Complete List of Characters in Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (NOT) Getting By in America. Her first goal is to find a place to live, no easy task given that she’ll have to stay close to a budget of $500 a month. The working poor, however, have to deal with rising rents and costs, even as the “labor shortage” taking place in all the cities where she lived put little upward pressure on wages. All you need to do is fill out a short form and submit an order. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. 1 SOC 310 12/03/12 Nickel and Dimed Book Analysis Looking at whether or not individuals living in poverty are considered to be a minority group by our contemporary culture is an interesting scenario. It’s a hectic environment with a moody manager, Joy, and she only lasts two days holding down both jobs—she then has to quit the Hearthside, since Jerry’s pays more. Ehrenreich combatted many myths about poverty in her book, and I think the first and biggest myth she debunked is the common belief that poor people are lazy. Barb met some individuals who had gone through or were going through truly horrible things, and while I didn’t enjoy reading about those situations, I did enjoy the breath of honesty that was brought into this book through those people. I think that the main belief that Barbara Ehrenreich tried to explore in Nickel and Dimed is that, if anyone is living in poverty, than they can work their way out if they would only get a job. She also learns more about the difficulties faced by her fellow employees, especially in housing—there are no secret economies for the poor, she realizes, and instead everyone is scrounging by in a near-emergency state, with some even sleeping in vans. She feels under-qualified and unskilled, slowly realizing that she’s only average in this world. Essay Nickel and Dimed Analysis. In addition, there are few rent options for less than $1,000 a month, and even the low-rent options are far out of town. The book Nickel and Dimed provides audiences with an opportunity to experience what it is like to do a minimum wage job. ” Perhaps the reason is management viewed there Black and Hispanic workers as less educated and sophisticated, and therefore didn’t want them directly interacting with the hotel’s middle and upper class clientele. She fills out dozens of applications from the help wanted ads, though soon realizes that these ads don’t necessarily mean there’s an opening—they’re how employers account for high turnover in the low-wage workforce. She uses the metaphors in Nickel and Dimed to help paint a vivid picture of the daily lives of the poor for her audience. Finally, she begs the woman at the hotel attached to Jerry’s to give her housekeeping work. Basically, it’s the concept of the “ American Dream ,” where you can be a homeless orphan, but if you work hard enough you can make your way up the ladder until you become the president, or anything else you desire to be. She has to be careful about what the company calls “time theft,” and she jealously guards her two 15-minute breaks, since she’s exhausted by being on her feet all day. The book was first published in 2001 by Metropolitan Books. She goes through the cities she’s lived, showing that Portland was the only place where she was able to stay ahead of expenses—and there she was only able to do that by working seven days a week. She’s realized how no job is truly “unskilled,” though low-wage workers are rarely, if ever, rewarded or congratulated for their effort. Barbara ends by detailing a few things readers can do to help, from volunteering to supporting government candidates, but argues that changing the economic culture of the United States will take far longer. The Special Milk and the National School Lunch Programs were developed feed children through their early childhoods as well as their school years. Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel and Dimed Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Summary and Analysis of Chapter Two: "Scrubbing in Maine" Summary: Ehrenreich moves to Portland, Maine, on August 24. Get Your Custom Essay on, By clicking “Write my paper”, you agree to our, By clicking Send Me The Sample you agree on the, Nickel and Dimed vs Scratched Beginnings: a Retorical Analysis, Review of "Nickel and Dimed" By Barbara Ehrenreich, Starving but Sarcastic: Ehrenreich’s Humor in Nickel and Dimed, https://graduateway.com/nickel-and-dimed-analysis/, Get your custom Barbara also struggles, once again, to find cheap housing—no affordable apartments have availability, so her only option is to stay at a motel in the city for an exorbitant $295 a week. She also applies for a job at Menards, a hardware store, but declines it when it turns out she’ll have to work eleven hours straight on her feet. The protagonist’s encounters as well as that of the rest of her colleagues indicate that social mobility is locked out to many in … The other is at The Maids, where she has an orientation that consists of a video showing the exact cleaning methods to be used. Her friend is out of town; Ehrenreich is in charge of caring for … Barbara’s final part of the experiment is in Minneapolis, where she interviews for a job at Wal-Mart, which has a similarly demeaning personality test and also requires a drug test—requiring Barbara to detox since she’s smoked marijuana recently, but also prompting her to think about how low-wage workers are viewed with suspicion and distrust. At Wal-Mart, she’s assigned to the ladies’ section, where she and her new friend and coworker Melissa measure their work in terms of carts filled and returned. Most of the women still don’t seem to have enough money to eat more than snacks. Shes often written about poverty, and at the moment the book opens, millions of Americans are about to leave welfare as the 1996 welfare reform legislation kicks in. “I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: … If even one of the things on this list doesn’t come through for you, then you’re probably using any extra money you’re making to cover up the gap that this missing thing costs. Ted seems to care for little other than money, but Barbara can tell how much his approval means to the others—probably because they get so little validation elsewhere. Sorry, but copying text is forbidden on this website. She also discovers that everyone at Jerry’s only manages to get by through having a second job. Minimum wage is nowhere near to what could be classified as a living wage, and these positions often have little room for career advancement within the company. If you need this or any other sample, we can send it to you via email. APA MLA Harvard Chicago ASA IEEE AMA Essay about Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Barbara quickly befriends Joan, the feminist hostess, and Gail, her coworker. Instant downloads of all 1391 LitChart PDFs The idea for Nickel and Dimed is hatched when Barbara Ehrenreich lunches with Harper's editor Lewis Lapham. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was to find out how a woman, recently removed … LitCharts Teacher Editions. Barbara prides herself on her ability to keep up with the younger women, though she realizes that she’s had the benefit of good health care and diet for decades. Barbara ends up moving into a Comfort Inn for $49.95 a night, a bit cheaper but still far from affordable, which means she’ll have to end her experiment early since she’ll never manage to equal income with expenses. The Economics of Poverty. Essay, Ask Writer For October 23, 2020aldous huxley complete essays vol 2. She storms out—and her time in Key West ends. Written from her perspective as an undercover journalist, it sets out to investigate the impact of the 1996 welfare reform act on the working poor in the United States. Nickel and Dimed on (not) Getting by in America has been a very well-written and heavily criticized book over the past decade or so. Meanwhile, she encounters constant suspicion and surveillance that she experiences from management. Well perhaps it is because the hotel 4 managers held the stereotype that people of color are lazy, and wanted them out of sight from their customers and guests and in positions where management could easily keep an eye on them and hold them accountable for any “time theft. our expert writers, Copying content is not allowed on this website, Ask a professional writer to help you with your text, Give us your email and we'll send you the essay you need, Please indicate where to send you the sample, Hi, my name is Jenn The American government has taken steps to show that it is more aware about the minority status of those living in poverty, and has taken some steps help people in that group. Learn everything you need to know about Barbara Ehrenreich, B.J., and more in Nickel and Dimed: On (NOT) Getting By in America. Similarly the white applicants were pressed to work as front desk staff or as waitresses in the hotel restaurant. She chooses it for its “whiteness.” As the tourist season ends, Barbara calculates that she won’t make it to the end of the month with her wages as they are, so she finds a second job at Jerry’s, a national fast-food chain. This, however, only lasts one day before she has a catastrophic shift at Jerry’s that night: George has been accused of stealing, she’s dealing with four highly demanding tables, and at one point Joy corners her to yell at her. Hire verified expert. She tries to call around for food aid, but most places are only open during working hours—inconvenient for the working poor—and she finally gets a hardly nutritious dinner for $7.02. Medicare and Medicaid were developed to provide aid to the aging and poverty stricken communities, and multiple food programs were put into place for different types of people needing assistance. She’s sent off with a team to clean houses, which turns out to be highly aerobic work, especially since they’re only allotted a certain amount of time per house. I think that the main belief that Barbara Ehrenreich tried to explore in Nickel and Dimed is that, if anyone is living in poverty, than they can work their way out if they would only get a job. In the “Evaluation” section of the book, Barbara details the lessons she’s learned through her experiment. Nickel and Dimed Analysis. When I had my field placement my sophomore year at Refuge of Hope, I remember one of the first things the director of the shelter would do during an intake, was to give the new client a bus pass, so that when the client was job hunting he could say that he had a reliable source of transportation. get custom paper. Either way it’s obvious that in this book the management held negative views of their Black and Hispanic workers, and acted upon them by denying people of color certain jobs. Many of these programs started in the 1960’s have evolved into services we hear a lot about in social work today, such as AmeriCorps, TANF, and WIC. Barbara is hoping to apply for hotel housekeeping jobs, since she remembers how tired waitressing made her as a teenager, and she figures she’s been “housekeeping” at home for years. If she can’t, she’ll quit and start over in the next place. Summary. One is as a dietary aide at a nursing home, where she’s assigned to serve meals at the Alzheimer’s unit, which she finds far easier than Jerry’s. In Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehlereich seeks to correct many such misconceptions about the bottom rungs of American society, and in particular, to make her readers aware of the obstacles that prevent even the most determined among the nation's poor from achieving access to the lifestyle that most above them take for granted. Nickel And Dimed Reflection lives we live as citizens in the United States. At one hotel, she is sent over to work at the accompanying restaurant, which she calls the “Hearthside.” It’s a sad-looking place, ruled over by a red-faced, snarling cook named Billy. Nickel and Dimed literature essays are academic essays for citation. I think that perhaps the most stunning revelation I received while reading this book, was when Barb acknowledges that while she was struggling with the physical part of being a maid, she was a healthy person who had grown up exercising and getting three square meals a day. Nickel and Dimed shows how people spend all their lives working in order to have basic human needs: food, shelter and clothing. I’m a social work major so of course I want to think, yes, individuals living poverty are most definitely an oppressed group in society. Theirs is junk and cheap foodstuffs, without a second thought on nutritional value. She speculates what it would be like to actually try to live on the minimum wage, and says that some enterprising journalist should try to do itnot thinking that the editor will say it should be her. In her book Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted ethnographic research to study what it’s like to be a low-wage worker in the United States. As her book project takes shape, she plans to spend a month in each of three places—Key West, Portland, Maine, and Minneapolis—intending to see if she can reach the end of the month with enough money to pay the next month’s rent. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”. In other words, prejudice is how you feel towards a certain people group, and discrimination is the way you act towards that certain people group. This book enlightens the world to a very real problem, the problem of low wage workers not being able to afford the cost of living. Irony. Instead, it forces citizens to live isolating lives that discourage them from seeking a better standard of living. Although many of the programs above have helped to alleviate some of the pressures faced by those living in poverty, in our ever changing country new problems are always coming up. ” People who belong to the upper and middle classes often don’t consider the fact that you can have a job yet still be living in poverty. Nickel and Dimed: On Getting By in America is a book written by Barbara Ehrenreich. I remember in class when Dave talked about giving out cell phones to the people at his shelter so that if they had a job interview, they wouldn’t have to put down the shelter’s telephone number. If the government could start a program that could force everyone in America to read this book, that would be great, but I don’t see that happening. This is best exemplified by the Internet boom that … Barbara Ehrenreich’s non-fiction bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, is the story of an essay writer who went undercover as a low wage worker to find out how non-skilled workers make ends meet.The experiment took place in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota, with the author finding a job and lodgings in each location. Upon arriving in the Twin Cities area, Ehrenreich goes to a friend’s apartment, where she will stay for a few days until she is settled. Barbara applies for multiple jobs, filling out a personality test for a housecleaning service called The Maids that seems to be meant to weed out anyone who’s freethinking and curious, though it’s an easy test to “psych out.”. At the same time, her more mundane concerns include her own money issues. But finding and maintaining everything on this checklist is an 5 extreme rarity in life. I’m a social work major so of course I want to think, yes, individuals living poverty are most definitely an oppressed group in society. Housekeeping, retail work, even waitressing are some of the most tiresome jobs In America, and the fact that you’re paid minimum wage for these things is astounding. Ehrenreich chooses Minnesota at whim. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nickel and Dimed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. Litcharts does shade off, by painting, the concept of meritocracy is challenged several... Nwaneri English 1111 03 research Writing in the off-season start to finish at the restaurant... Why Advocacy is such an important part of social work the feminist hostess, and nickel and dimed analysis. Our, “ would not have made it through AP literature without the printable PDFs they spend a huge of! The Internet boom that … Nickel and Dimed shows how people spend all their lives working in order have! 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