Nickel And Dimed Thesis

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 …show more content…
An example of this is when Ehrenreich went to the doctors for a rash that she got when she was working in Portland, Maine as a maid. In the book she describes her experience with the rash when she said, “The itching gets so bad at night that I have mini tantrums, waving my arms and stamping my feet to keep from scratching or bawling. So I fall back on the support networks of my real life social class, call the dermatologist I know in Key West.” (Dunn, 88) If the author didn’t call her dermatologist and suffered through the rash, the chapter would have been more thought provoking. It would catch readers’ attention to see what would have happened over time to her health. Another event that the author could have done differently to make the book interesting was when she decided to not get her other job at the hardware store in Minneapolis. If she would have worked there and at Walmart, then we would have seen her struggle with the two jobs. Seeing the author taking on all this work makes reader’s curious and anxious to read more, but knowing that she always had a way out bored me and my classmate at certain parts of the