All Quiet On The Western Front

Each chapter in All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, has a different story, or idea. The chapters each talk about one battle or settlement, or some memory of Baumer's. The seemingly flustered way the chapters are arranged are symbolic of the chaotic bustle of war, and the thoughts of a young soldier in the midst of it. Each chapter isn't supposed to tell one large story, it's supposed to show the horrors of war and how it seeped into Baumer's mind. However near the end, when Baumer gets hurt and sent to the hospital, things are a little less horrific, so the chapters are more put together, and tells a larger story. The tone of this novel is mostly sad and foreboding, and he is always talking about how he will never be a normal person with normal feelings. Remarque uses a lot of ethos and pathos, to intrigue the reader and making them feel sympathetic towards the characters. There is very little imagery, sticking to the ultimate terrors of war is bad enough, there was no need to add more vicious images. The diction of All Quiet On The Western Front is cropped, blunt, however it is somewhat poetic at the same time. The way Remarque writes illustrates a man damaged by war, yet still has a deep inspiring mind.

AQ from Olivia Oppelt

In All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, each chapter having a different focus gives the reader a sense of how much disorder occurs during a war. It helps the reader get a feel of how the soldiers felt during the time of the war because we didn’t know what to expect out of the next chapter just like the soldiers never knew what they were about to face battling in the war. The book creates a sense of mystery for the reader. Without the chapters going in chronological order can also be confusing for the reader which can be considered a negative effect of the book. Throughout the book Remarque uses very descriptive imagery to describe the war which helps the reader understand how brutal the war was especially for the soldiers who risked their lives everyday and all the suffering they had to endure.

MC from Olivia Oppelt

In The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, the humans try to colonize Mars in a way similar to the Europeans trying to colonize America. In the beginning of the book there are four expeditions in which men are sent from Earth to Mars to see if there is potential for humans to live on the land similarly to the way Europeans sent men on many expeditions to America to see if the land would be profitable for them and suitable for their living situations. Both of these expeditions involved sufficient decreases in the natives’ populations and exploration of the new found land. Within the first four expeditions to Mars, the humans accidentally killed most of the Martians; bringing with them chicken pox to the land. Likewise while inhabiting America, the Europeans brought over a variety of diseases that the Native Americans had no way to protect  themselves from. Over time the Earth men forced their culture and ways of life upon the Martians just as the Europeans made the Native Americans conform to their way of life. The earth men changed Mars in many ways similar to the ways Europeans changed America.

ND from Olivia Oppelt

In the book Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author goes under dramatic changes to change her lifestyle in order to discover the harsh conditions of the lower working class. She undergoes a series of working minimum wage jobs such as a maid, waitress, and an employee at Wal-Mart to observe the reality of unfair working and poor housing conditions. Ehrenreich notes while working these various jobs, her coworkers’ living conditions and how she struggles to live on a minimum wage budget to pay for food, shelter, and transportation to support herself. Ehrenreich argues that that the low-class wages are not enough, considering the high costs of living expenses. Ehrenreich chooses to blame the middle and upper class societies for the poor conditions that the lower class have to put up with. After experiencing these struggles, she proposes more health benefits should be in place for low-wage workers and employers should have to pay their employees more per hour for their hardwork.

17. After reading Nickel and Dimed I believe that having any job is better than having no job at all because at least I would have some way of supporting myself and can make do with what I have with a little income than having no income at all and trying to support myself without living in poverty. While reading this book I felt angry because in the beginning Ehrenreich seemed like she took things for granted and thought living off a minimum wage job would be easy so she could just calculate it and that would be the end of the story, but little did she know unexpected things happen and expenses are hard to keep up with when people live off of minimum wage. I now feel better informed about the poor living conditions of people trying to support themselves and their families off of minimum wage jobs, and I feel like I sometimes take the little things in life for granted and am happy for even being employed. I feel that something needs to be done to improve the living situations of the poor.

Nickel And Dimed

In Barbara Ehrenreich's nonfiction bestseller, Nickel and Dimed, she decides the best way to get a quality article is to live in her writing. She travels to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota to experience life as a low wage worker. Shr finds that, when conversing with coworkers who have lives of less luxury, there isn't much difference in conversation topics. The first jobs that Barbara worked she was only able to handle for a few weeks due to the physical demand on them. At the end of each job, she usually tells a few other workers that she is actually only working for the prupose of writing this; to her surprise they never seemed a bit shocked at the news and were caught up in their own low wage situations.

ND from Michael Tigges

8/23/11

Nickled & Dimed

In Nickled and Dimed, the author and narrator, Barbara Ehrenreich gives up a live of mediocre luxury to explore the life of a minimum wage employee. My perceptions of the blue-collar Americans were transformed in this book due to the fact that I always thought they lived a decent life. I was unable to relate to this, as I've always lived in a sort of luxury, but it made me feel sympathetic toward the blue collar minimum wage workers. My notations of poverty have transformed drastically, as before reading Nickled and Dimed, poverty to me was literally just not having a place to sleep at night. I've never had to give a tip, but this book has made me believe that that could make a waiter's day, and that you should put thought into the tip you give your waiter. In terms of sales people and maids, I think this book increased the respect I have for them in regards to line of work. It's a hectic job with it's perks that must all be learned to thrive in the job.

In terms of the writing style, I didn't enjoy Ehrenreich's style of writing. I think she struggled to use sophisticated language when regarding her life as opposed to the minimum wage life, in an attempt to contrast the two. I feel this was not beneficial to the book, and that the word choice did not effectively contrast the two worlds.

ND from Kinse Doerr

Nickel and Dimed

            The novel Nickel and Dimed, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, is a documentary on living with a  low-wage in America.  Ehrenreich travels to three locations, challenging the opportunities of making a living with  minimum wage. She struggles  both physically and mentally along the way. Ehrenreich realizes that it is very difficult to support just herself, let alone a family. She no longer sees people as rich or poor, but sees everybody as real people, all with real problems.

Question 17: After reading Nickel and Dimed, do you think that having a job-any job- is better than no job at all?

After reading this book, I still think that having any job is better than no job at all. Even before reading this book, I could tell you that having a job is better than not.  Obviously it’s better to at least support yourself a little than giving up and not trying at all. You should always have a job, because without one, you’ll just be lazy person who gave up.

ND from Ben Jensen

Nickel and Dimed Blog

Barbara Ehrenreich sets out to prove that low wage workers cannot live comfortable or meaningful lives by abandoning her comfortable white-collar job and taking blue-collar jobs in three different cities. She encounters several problems; many of her supervisors do not really care about the workers under them and enter into selfish vindictive behavior. Another problem she encounters is the availability and affordability of safe housing. She also describes the working conditions as horrible, and the tasks she is assigned as degrading. Ehrenreich says that she now understands and can empathize with the lower class and the struggles they go through on a daily basis. She argues that the wages paid to workers are not enough to live on, and that the Unites States government despite its wealth does not help out the poor with effective public transportation, or subsidized housing (pg. 214). This premise is blatantly and obviously false, the U.S. government offers many ways for the poor to defray some of the cost of living. Food stamps, unemployment benefits, welfare, AND defrayed cost public transportation to name a few.

Question 17:

Having a job, any job, is ten times better for the individual and for society in general than allowing a person to live off welfare or some other government benefit. The only way to eliminate poverty is to not give people money; this only creates a culture of entitlement while not contributing to the national/international economy at all. The way to eliminate poverty is to have every able-bodied adult working in a job.  This goal is certainly not served by allowing an individual to stay on welfare indefinitely. This book certainly angered me, but not in the way Ms. Ehrenreich meant it too.  It is unfortunate that we were forced to read this book in a high school composition class, Ms. Ehrenreich is ignorant of basic economics and obviously biased toward socialist economics. Not to mention she is entirely unqualified to enter into a discussion on economics (a la the “Evaluation” chapter) She has a Ph.D. in cellular biology, not economics. Barbara Ehrenreich does not trust the free market to create wealth and benefit the poor. The only way for the poor to be benefitted is by the creation of wealth which takes place most efficiently when free people are permitted to bargain and negotiate freely with respect to their labor and the goods and services they wish to purchase.

ND from Keegan Gallery

Nickel and Dimed Blog

In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich dives into the world of low-wage jobs and poverty, trying to discover if impoverished people had any secrets to getting by on minimum wage jobs. She faces many struggles on her journey through three different cities. These struggles are both mental and physical and are noted in all three cities. In Minneapolis she faces a couple of mental struggles. She had to do monotonous work in the ladies’ department at Wal-Mart for sometimes eight to nine hours straight. She also had many horrible managers who were only concerned with keeping the business running and making money. In Minneapolis her manager called many pointless meetings and reinforced not to talk to other employees on the job. In Portland, Maine she found her work as a maid to be both physically demanding, requiring a lot of bending over and carrying things, and degrading to her. She also found out that many of her co-workers are just barely scraping by. She describes the situations of many of her co-workers such as Gail who lives in a room with a roommate for 250 dollars a week. Or the Czechoslovakian workers who live in an extremely crowded flat with not even enough beds for all of them. Ehrenreich soon found out that her co-workers had no secrets to getting by other than continually grind out every single day and just dealing with your situation.

Reader’s Guide Question #8

The goodwill and generosity displayed by Ehrenreich’s colleagues was extremely surprising to me. These people are struggling with payments every month/week/day. They’re working extremely long hours and oftentimes two jobs. To display generosity with that amount of stress put on you is extremely impressive. This generosity shocked me.

MC from Andrea Arthofer

Blog Question for The Martian Chronicles:

The colonization of Mars was very similar to the colonization of America in how it was first colonized and the effects of colonization. For example, it took a few expeditions for each place to actually be settled. Once the new lands were explored, the motivation to come was very similar. It started out with coming for more work opportunities in both places. Then, there was a drive for freedom; in America it was for religious freedom and at Mars, African-Americans from the south went to escape the prejudices of the white men. Another similarity is the high amount of people traveling to these places in a short period of time. In the Martian Chronicles this was compared to a ‘swarm of locusts.’

The after-effects of the settlement were similar as well. When first settled, new people brought fatal diseases to the natives. Along with diseases, culture was brought with the settlers, such as the style of towns built. Also, when white men came to America, they named many geographical things after settlers, removing the descriptive titles given by Native Americans. This happened again when Americans went to Mars. For these reasons, the colonization of Mars and America were very similar.