During my junior year of high school, I somewhat became aware of Women's Right Issue. I have made an effort to evaluate majority of the culture standard that I had previously taken in as it just being “the untaught order of items.” One of the directions that I took to enlarge my knowledge of the female soul involved in women’s creative writing. That is one reason why I spent some time of my life crying, laughing, feeling puzzled, and often, feeling livid and worried. It all started when I decided to pick up a book called “The Women’s Room” and read the book.…
Everyone wants privacy in their life and they often secure their things from others but what about your WIFI connection?…
In the 1660s, the number of African-Americans among the entire population of New England was 1.7%. The percentage of found-out adulteresses was even less. Nevertheless, a truly gifted seamstress such as Hester Prynne wasn’t standing on ever street corner. The public all agreed that ordinarily, finery and indulgence was frowned upon in the Puritanic society. However, some held the opinion that Governor Bellingham was keeping enough distance between himself and Hester Prynne, and that it was appropriate for him to have employed her to fashion embroidered gloves for state occasions; Others frowned upon his decision and believed he should not have employed Hester Prynne.…
In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich plunges into the world of minimum wage workers. In her immersion, Ehrenreich attempts various types of minimum wage jobs such as those that would be categorized as service work like a waitress or a house cleaner. Ehrenreich expresses not only the difficulty of these jobs, but the behavior in which people acted towards her. She explains that once she entered the world other service work she was seen as lower standard of human, if she was “seen” at all, since many times Ehrenreich would feel invisible to the rest of the world. In addition, sometimes she was not even seen as a human at all, but instead an animal or machine. This was seen most prominently with her time spent as a maid.…
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. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was to find out how a woman, recently removed from welfare, due to policy reform, would make it on a six or seven dollar an hour wage. The experiment itself started out as just a question in the middle of lunch with one of Ehrenreich's editors, it soon turned into a job assignment. Before starting the experiment, Ehrenreich laid out some ground rules for her to follow during the duration of the assignment. First she could never use her college degree, or other work experience to land a job. Second, she had to take the highest paying job that was offered to her, and do whatever she could to hold it. This means not quitting a job, no matter how grueling the work place environment was. Third, she had to find the cheapest living conditions she could find, with reasonable respect paid to personal safety, and basic privacy. Also before starting out Ehrenreich was sure to point out that while she did try to adhere to the rules as best she could, there was minor rule bending and occasionally rule breaking. The final problem Ehrenreich worked out before embarking on this journey, is how to market herself to the people she was about to work for and with. She decided to go with a cover story that was more of a succinct version of who she really is. While it is true that she is a divorced wife, it is untrue that she has not been employed over the past few years. This was required to keep from receiving preferential treatment, and to prevent her test environment from becoming tainted. Ehrenreich decided that since she already lived in Florida she might as well start there with her experiment, moving to nearby Key West, Florida. She shares in the opening that she…
As the chapter unfolds you can get a good sense of the author’s voice and opinions before she starts the experiment. This is important because over the course of the chapter her morals and opinions start to change as she begins to feel the pressures of working for her food and living arrangement. The author’s attitude is very expressive and she goes into detail on several occasions of how she is starting to feel about the conditions of the lower class and their labor, and also the physical strain it is putting on herself.…
Here it was all pennies and clutter and spittle on the curb. Here people walked fast to juggle the dimes, to make a deal, to find cheap liver or a tomato that was overripe. Here was the indefinable stink of despair. Here modesty was a luxury. People struggled for it. (pg. 18)…
When Mrs. Turpin enters the doctor’s waiting room, she immediately scans the room to look not only for the available seats, but to evaluate the other patients. She classifies the patients by their appearances, and places them below her in class according to her categories of social status. The first to meet her eyes, is a well-dressed woman. Mrs. Turpin is pleased with her companionship because they seem to have the same opinion of the small child taking up two seats. Mrs. Turpin then scoffs at the “leathery old woman in [the] cotton print dress” (393), because she is poor, and related to the other “white-trashy” (394) patients. Her judgments are based solely on what she can see, and her first impressions of the remaining patients are not kind.…
As the story opens, we are introduced to an opinionated, observant, sarcastic and hormone-driven 19-year old boy who works as a cashier in a grocery store of a small town. As he describes the store and his surroundings, the reader begins to sense Sammy’s discontentment with his mundane life when he shares his thoughts and perceptions. For example, he refers to customers as “sheep” and “house slaves”. The external conflict between Sammy and his small town’s views develops as he watches the girls maneuver their way around the store. These girls were a breath of fresh air. They were new, different and seemed to stir up some outrage and criticism. For instance, Updike writes, “A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct” (119). He even began to feel sorry for the girls as he saw “old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (Updike 120). This demonstrates how Sammy began to realize how closed-minded and ordinary the town he lived in was. Another external conflict arises when Lengel, the store manager and Sunday school teacher confronts the girls about the store’s policy. In particular, Updike states, “‘we want you decently dressed when you come in here’ ” (121). Sammy resented the fact that Lengel and all the “sheep” judged the girls simply by their clothing or lack thereof. His act of quitting was to show them that they all overreacted to the situation with the girls.…
In the book Nickel and Dimed on (Not) getting by in America, the author lived a life of a low wage worker. This experiment, while deemed insightful by some people, was considered dull and unrealistic to one of my classmates. In response to the question, “What parts of the book made Ehrenreich’s experience unrealistic?” my peer said, “She didn’t experience what low wage workers really went through. In Into the Wild, McCandless really went into the wild and experienced everything, but Ehrenreich didn’t live a poor life. If she had done that it would have made for a much more interesting book.” I agree with my classmate on this comment because while I did learn about some struggles that low wage workers have to go through, I didn’t learn what…
Though a myriad of Lucille Clifton’s poetry is about survival, the people in the ships have barely survived, but more importantly, though many of them have not, a significant amount did despite the fetid, deadly, inhumane conditions. Lines 1-5 illustrate the terrible conditions of the ship in which the slaves are crammed, “loaded like spoons," in the deep holds or “bellies” of these ships. They are crowded in there so tightly that they have to suffer in their own sweat and stink, unable to get clean, and probably unable to defecate anywhere besides on themselves and those beside them.…
"Sixteen and college-bound", the teen-aged girl in the poem Patty's Charcoal Drive-In learns the challenges of having a first job: hard work for little pay. Her role is to serve, to accommodate customer's needs by "presenting each tray as if it were a banquet." Then after working hard hopes to merely earn tips from loose change "flung carelessly as the stars."…
This paper was prepared for English 160, College Writing, Module 8 Homework Assignment taught by Instructor Daryl Morazzini…
When Helene arrives in the south, she is baffled by the severe segregation between colored and whites. Something as simple as using the toilet is segregated so vigorously that “colored” people use “a field of grass” as the restroom. Through Helene’s diction and behavior, she portrays the “luxury” she possessed when going through Tennessee and Kentucky and having the privilege to use a toilet rather then a field of grass. Helene’s surprise reaction to the realities of the segregated south shows how she underestimates the harsh reality of the whites and colored.…
A sense of confusion is created about the narrator’s identity when the narrator begins to form specific observations relating to humans and the human body. When the narrator goes to the Laundromat, he recognizes another man there, but rather than striking up a conversation, he begins to watch and analyze the man’s personal objects and behavior. For instance, he notices the other man washing his bed sheets, and his immediate thought is that the “people here” use these sheets for “reasons of hygiene.” His use of the phrase “people here” indicates that he is not a part of the culture/planet due to the fact that every culture universally uses sheets for hygiene purposes. Furthermore, he explains that the use of sheets is mainly for a human’s personal cleanliness. It is odd that he specifically brings up personal hygiene as the first thing that comes to mind for the purpose of bed sheets. The narrator’s observations hint that he is foreign to the lifestyle of humans. Additionally, the narrator notices that the word “feet” is inscribed along one side of the bed sheets, and believes it to be a “precaution” so that one’s “lips” do not touch anything that has been “rubbed and contaminated.” His emphasis on the sheets protecting a person’s mouth from becoming dirty demonstrates his specific connection of objects to body parts. Thus, his specific analysis highlights his distinctive habit of relating ordinary items to a human’s body and possibly suggests that his body does not require the same kind of hygienic precautions.…