The Martian Chronicles

In his science fiction novel The Martian Chronicles, author Ray Bradbury tells the story of the colonization of Mars. Like in the colonization of America, this process began with the sending of expeditions funded by the government of the mother country. However, in the book, there is apparently only one country interested in colonizing Mars, America, but several European countries had desires relating to America. Another similarity between the two processes relates to the spread of disease. Diseases carried by Europeans wreaked havoc on the Native American populations, and chicken pox almost entirely wiped out the Martians. Another similar trend was the nature of early settler towns. In both the New World and Mars, mining towns were important to the new settlers. Finally, people leaving for Mars and the New World had similar push and pull factors. Black people in America, in the book, wanted to leave so that they could start new lives as equals, and Europeans wanted to leave in order to have religious freedom.

Nickle and Dimed

In the novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich finds herself struggling while living a low-wage life. The first place Ehrenreich lives as an employee is Key West, Florida. She works as a waitress at a restaurant she identifies as the Hearthside, finding a trailer nearby to live in. She also works as a hotel maid, and finds doing both extremely difficult. At the Hearthside, she finds most of the workers struggling just as much as her with rent and living expenses. She also finds a lot of frustration and anger. Ehrenreich finds out a lot about her co-workers. Gail lives in a place for $250 a week with a roommate that drives her crazy. Claude the cook (along with other Haitian men) live in crowded situations. Pregnant Annette lives with her mother. Marianne lives with her boyfriend in a one person trailer for $170 a week. Billy lives in a $400 a month lot. Andy, another cook, lives on his boat. Tina, another waitress, lives in a room at the Days Inn for $60 dollars a night with her boyfriend. Joan lives in her van. She leaves Key West before her trial month is even up, struggling to live a succesful life like many of her ex-co-workers.
In the next chapter of Ehrenreich's life as a low-wage worker, she moves to Portland, Maine. She works for The Maids, a housekeeping service. She takes another job at a nursing home she identifies as Woodcrest. She also finds working in Portland very difficult. The manager at The Maids, is a complete jerk and a cheap one at that. She encounters co-workers at The Maids that don't get sick leave, dont get to go home when they are injured, and take the job just for the little extra money just to get them by. As a dietary aide at Woodcrest, Ehrenreich has to do her job plus everyone else's job one day, finding that it's not an uncommon thing.
Finally, Ehrenreich moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota. She finds that the avalibility of apartments, ecspecially cheap ones, are not common. She scores a job at Wal-Mart in the ladies department. She discovers that workers at Wal-Mart do not get overtime, have very strict rules, cannot use profanity, and cannot even speak the word "union". She also discovers that Wal-Mart workers have been fired for wanting better wages and benefits, but managers claimed that they were fired for breaking company rules. She stays in hotels the whole time she lives there, which are mostly unsecure and uncomfortable.
Many of Ehrenreich's co-workers are in hard situations and some they just can't ecscape of. Ehrenreich adapts to the low-wage life, but she still can't support herself, ecspecially without a living companion. She also finds that many of the workers can't quit their jobs for higher paying jobs because of transportation issues.

All Quiet on the Western Front

In his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Remarque gives each chapter a special focus on a specific aspect of World War 1. For example, chapter 6 focuses on combat and trench warfare, and chapter 10 focuses on life at the hospital, frequent death, and painful injuries. The book is written as a first-person past tense narrative, with frequent flashbacks to events that happened prior. This jumping around enhances the story, as Remarque is able to include relevant pieces of information and back story, while excluding the redundancy of writing about days that are very similar to each other.

Of particular interest to me was Remarque's use of dialogue to explain his beliefs. In chapter 3, he has Stanislaus Katczinsky compare man to beast to explain the army and Himmelstoss's behavior. Since he was a veteran of World War 1 himself, Remarque could speak knowledgeably about the army, and Kat was the best character to relay his opinions through due to his age and experience over Paul and his classmates.

Also striking, to me, was the hypocrisy and nationalistic fervor present in the German populace. Schoolmaster Kantorek embodies both of these traits, as he urged all of his students to enlist in the army, even the unwilling Joseph Behm, but did not volunteer himself. While Paul is on leave in chapter 7, he encounters more of this fervor from a school head-master, who is convinced that he knows more about the war than Paul.

Nickel and Dimed

During the process of researching lower-class life and conditions for her book Nickel and Dimed, author Barbara Ehrenreich faces several struggles. For example, while waiting tables in Florida, she has to serve a group of 10 picky British tourists in addition to several other tables simultaneously. In Maine, Ehrenreich is, on one day, the only dietary worker in the the Alzheimer's ward of a retirement house. She has to handle the meals of many people with much less help than she would normally get. In Minnesota, Ehrenreich struggles with finding employment. She is particularly worried about passing drug tests due to her marijuana use. These experiences, and others, show her how poor people live. Becoming poor and just struggling to put a roof over her head reveal the tribulations of some of the poorest of Americans. Her argument in the "Evaluation" chapter is that wealthy America is in control of the fate of poor America and remains ignorant to its troubles or deliberately tries to push them out of sight.
Reader's Guide: Question 17
1.) After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job-any job-is better than no job at all? Yes.
2.) Did this book make you feel angry? Yes; the author's liberal bias and cynicism often got in the way of the telling of her experiences.
3.) Better informed? No.
4.) Relieved that someone has finally described your experience? No; the situations described in this book are dissimilar to my own experiences.
5.) Galvanized to do something? No.