Serving Florida vs. Dumpster Diving
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People suffer from poverty every day right here in the United States. Lacking money and basic necessities like food, shelter, clothes, education and healthcare are the goods necessary to live a decent life; however not everyone has access to these luxury. In Serving Florida, Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as a waitress and housekeeper in Key West Florida, and to live the life of a low socio-economic class. She discovers that it is not financially viable to live off just the minimum wage. She even had to get two jobs to survive. In On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner describes his life on the street and the beautiful art of Dumpster Diving, which is diving in the dump to search for goods. He focused on a reminder to those who are careless about their things that actually still can be very useful to others, especially the homeless. Both authors allure their audiences by describing the lifestyle of the poor who live on the poverty level and how they are invisible to the middle class.
Barbara Ehrenreich ‘s mission was to witness firsthand the plight of the poverty but saw the middle class perception of it as disturbing. She stated “ It strikes me, in my middle-class solipsism, that there is gross improvidence in some of these arrangements” (140). Barbara is vividly describing her experience and sending a message to the reader that there are many Americans working very hard to survive and not grow at the same time. People who are in this situation are continuing to stay in the same level and not given the opportunity to succeed.
People suffer from poverty every day right here in the United States. Lacking money and basic necessities like food, shelter, clothes, education and healthcare are the goods necessary to live a decent life; however not everyone has access to these luxury. In Serving Florida, Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as a waitress and housekeeper in Key West Florida, and to live the life of a low socio-economic class. She discovers that it is not financially viable to live off just the minimum wage. She even had to get two jobs to survive. In On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner describes his life on the street and the beautiful art of Dumpster Diving, which is diving in the dump to search for goods. He focused on a reminder to those who are careless about their things that actually still can be very useful to others, especially the homeless. Both authors allure their audiences by describing the lifestyle of the poor who live on the poverty level and how they are invisible to the middle class.
Barbara Ehrenreich ‘s mission was to witness firsthand the plight of the poverty but saw the middle class perception of it as disturbing. She stated “ It strikes me, in my middle-class solipsism, that there is gross improvidence in some of these arrangements” (140). Barbara is vividly describing her experience and sending a message to the reader that there are many Americans working very hard to survive and not grow at the same time. People who are in this situation are continuing to stay in the same level and not given the opportunity to succeed.