Post by drewlane on Aug 8, 2011 10:16:46 GMT -5
Nickel and Dimed by Barabara Ehrenreich is a book that really shows the truth of the situation below the poverty line. I believe the book made a very good point of showing the everyday working class American that the lady that was your waitress or the gentleman organizing the clothes in Walmart are not disgusting people who don't want a "real job", they are probably working harder than the middle class American could ever imagine. Often in the book, one would find that Ehrenreich would have two jobs and she still wouldn't make enough money to finish out the month. Her accounts of working and the "corporate world" really opened my eyes to the people that run the drive-through and organize the clothes at Walmart. I think that Ehrenreich wanted to show us that these people are not being paid to take orders from us with a smile, they are actually hardly being paid at all.
Along with Ehrenreich's insight and unique experiences, came her upper-middle-class viewpoint. I found that while reading the book, she would make comments that seemed slightly snobby or disgusted with her surroundings. I specially noticed this while she was staying in a hotel room in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She constantly complained about the horrid disrepair and sanitation of the hotel while she had no other choice, much like other people with minimum-wage jobs where she was living. I found that instead of writing about how people were forced to stay in hotels like that and how it is a shame, she only wrote about her troubles and her feelings from her viewpoint, rather than from someone from her workplace's viewpoint. Sometimes, however, the viewpoint was a nice perspective on what was going on. Her genuine shock when she ran out of money and quit one of her jobs in Key West, Florida showed just how baffled she was that she could work as hard as she did and not even be able to make ends meet.
Overall, I thoroughly appreciated and loved the book. She successfully showed the ills of a sector of our society that most middle-class Americans overlook. She showed us that the friendly face we see in the drive-through at McDonald's or the greeter at our local Walmart are really actual people with actual lives and they are struggling worse than we could ever imagine to just pay the bills. I believed the book was genius, and a very impressive piece of investigative journalism, even though Ehrenreich could be a bit snobbish from time-to-time.
Along with Ehrenreich's insight and unique experiences, came her upper-middle-class viewpoint. I found that while reading the book, she would make comments that seemed slightly snobby or disgusted with her surroundings. I specially noticed this while she was staying in a hotel room in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She constantly complained about the horrid disrepair and sanitation of the hotel while she had no other choice, much like other people with minimum-wage jobs where she was living. I found that instead of writing about how people were forced to stay in hotels like that and how it is a shame, she only wrote about her troubles and her feelings from her viewpoint, rather than from someone from her workplace's viewpoint. Sometimes, however, the viewpoint was a nice perspective on what was going on. Her genuine shock when she ran out of money and quit one of her jobs in Key West, Florida showed just how baffled she was that she could work as hard as she did and not even be able to make ends meet.
Overall, I thoroughly appreciated and loved the book. She successfully showed the ills of a sector of our society that most middle-class Americans overlook. She showed us that the friendly face we see in the drive-through at McDonald's or the greeter at our local Walmart are really actual people with actual lives and they are struggling worse than we could ever imagine to just pay the bills. I believed the book was genius, and a very impressive piece of investigative journalism, even though Ehrenreich could be a bit snobbish from time-to-time.