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Ehrenreich Puts a Face on the Statistics

            Nickel and Dimed: On not getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich is a nonfiction novel which I read for pleasure over the summer. Ehrenreich is a journalist who goes undercover as a member of the working class poor. She discovered if one really can get by on minimum wage. So many times people have said, "why don't they just get a job?" when they do not know how hard it is for these people. She shows how hard it can be working a minimum wage not only financially but also physically and emotionally. .
             Ehrenreich takes the reader through the whole process from searching for a safe place to live, interviews, testing, and the jobs themselves. She works in different geographic areas such as Florida, Minnesota, and Maine. She tries various types of jobs from waitressing and nursing home aide to Wal-Mart and Merry Maids. Each is accompanied by its own set of challenges. .
             In each area Ehrenreich finds it difficult to find a safe place to live that will actually accommodate her budget. Sometimes she has to stay in motels because her job does not provide her with enough money for anything else. With everything she does she has to be very frugal with her money because it never seems to go very far. The highest amount she ever gets paid is eight dollars an hour with the Maids in Maine. With this job Ehrenreich experiences so much physical pain. The company makes her scrub the floors by hand everyday. This has her popping six Advil by the end of the day. That medicine was generic by the way. One of her coworkers in Maine breaks her ankle but she continues to work. This shows the emotional side of the story when we learn that the coworker is scared to stop working for fear that her husband may actually beat her.
             Ehrenreich has statistics to share all throughout the book but for me the most important lesson was not in the numbers. She writes about what happened to her spirit and her feeling of self-worth.


Essays Related to Ehrenreich Puts a Face on the Statistics

1. Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich

The tone Barbara Ehrenreich uses in the book "Nickel and Dimed " is changing rapidly because she wants her reader to really see the realistic of what she has to face. She put herself into the life of a minimum wage circumstance to see if she can survive or not. ... Her tones factually show the challenges and struggles that she face with the job. ... Barbara Ehrenreich shows the factual that many of the workers she works with are homeless. ... Another problem Ehrenreich and the people has to face is finding an affordable housing. ...

  • Word Count: 788
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

2. Barbara Ehrenreich

Book Critique I've never read one of Barbara Ehrenreich's books but I might have to check one of them out after reading Nickeled and Dimed. ... Ehrenreich often found it a struggle to make ends meet even though she was working two jobs, seven days a week. ... Ehrenreich's book is a success. ... Ehrenreich did an excellent job of covering the intended subject matter. ... Ehrenreich chose not to examine statistics from the comfort of her own home or by interviewing unskilled laborers. ...

  • Word Count: 1037
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

3. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

While working as a maid, Ehrenreich saw that many of her co-workers had physical problems because they had worked as maids for many years. ... On another occasion one of Ehrenreich co-workers, Holly, "trips in a hole in the ground and falls down and screams" (63). ... Ehrenreich reflects on the jobs she had and is amazed on how much pain low wage people can handle. ... As Ehrenreich searches for jobs she encounters many jobs that do not pay enough to sustain her. ... As Ehrenreich journeys more into low wage jobs she identifies a problem that many poverty stricken people face. ...

  • Word Count: 1216
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Orwell Vs. Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich mentions the difficulty of the jobs, but only through her own experience. ... In her introduction Ehrenreich admits that "[her] aim here was much more straightforward and objective - just to see whether [she] could match income to expenses- (Ehrenreich 6). ... However, Ehrenreich does not discuss change in Nickel and Dimed. ... which is exactly what she focuses on (Ehrenreich 193). ... Ehrenreich does not discuss the necessity for change within our society at all. ...

  • Word Count: 994
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

The customer over the counter would never know the hardships the employee faced only to serve them a burger, french fries and the abominable soda. ... As Ehrenreich evaluates the situation she is well aware of the fact that health insurance isn't available. ... The food to put on the table? ... Most regulations the organizations would put onto businesses several years ago weren't as strict as they are in the more recents years. ... An example of this being not putting signs on wet floors, where employees and even customers could put themselves into great danger; "The floor is slick...

  • Word Count: 895
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Has Bibliography

6. Men Vs. Women - Gender Divison

Ehrenreich use of this private testimony makes her ethos even stronger for her female readers. ... Ehrenreich uses a specific instance where women usually play a feeble role opposed to men. ... I feel at that point she should have secured her readers with statistics of how many times an average young girl is told to smile opposed to young boys, it would have added more to her statement. ... For example instead of using statistics of percentages she makes shallow references to the male's role in socializing with the opposite sex. ... Ehrenreich's entire essay takes the task of ...

  • Word Count: 683
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Has Bibliography

7. Apreciation To The Language

Ehrenreich is a liberal, but some of her ideas are conservative. Ehrenreich, (oppose to Faux) believes in outside assistant, to help the nations problems. Ehrenreich believes that the political ideas evolved with time, and that their ideas changed, as conditions changed. ... Many times great ideas are not put in to work, because of the different mentality of the liberalist and conservatives. ... Ehrenreich argues that, the democrat's views are as important as they were years ago. ...

  • Word Count: 267
  • Approx Pages: 1
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

8. Nickle and Dimed- chapter #1

Nickel and Dimed Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a well written but frightening book that looks into the real lives of invisible, low wage, hard working Americans. ... This soon become overwhelming and Ehrenreich decides to resign from Hearthside. ... She is faced with and overcomes many physical, psychological, and emotional triumphs along the way. I think that Barbara Ehrenreich is a brave, smart, and courageous women who still maintains her sense of humor even after she lowers her lifestyle to that of a underpaid unskilled worker. ... Ehrenreich also did a great job in...

  • Word Count: 531
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Women and poverty as related to

Ehrenreich claims that, ideally, in order to survive on minimum wage, " one job will never be enough." ... Approximately ninety percent of households who choose to rent face a housing wage of more than twice the present minimum wage. ... (Ehrenreich 81) The wealthy are building bigger and better housing, and the low-income families are unable to afford even decent rental housing. ... Therefore, the lowest income households face the most serious housing problems. ... Barbara Ehrenreich of Nickel and Dimed proved this fact, as she moved from town to town and found rental housing ridiculous...

  • Word Count: 1140
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

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