ND from Andrea Arthofer

Blog Question for Nickel and Dimed:

In the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the struggles of the poverty are revealed when she goes undercover and tries to make it living on a minimum wage job. The biggest struggles she faces are the lack of money, working miserable jobs, and getting treated unfairly.

The most obvious problem presented in the story is the lack of money. Ehrenreich struggles trying to support herself working two minimum wage jobs at one time, and wonders how a person could support a whole family working a minimum wage job. Her eyes are opened by witnessing her coworkers trying to survive. She sees them living in their cars because they can’t afford homes. Another problem she has to face is the horrible conditions she has to deal with in her jobs. She is forced to do degrading tasks, such as cleaning toilets. She also discusses that the demands of low-class jobs are much higher than people typically stereotype them. She says this type of work requires a lot of stamina, fast learning, memory, focus, and quick thinking. Repetitive movements done in this job can lead to stress injuries that often have to be worked through in order to continue doing the jobs. The last major thing Barbara Ehrenreich noticed is the change of treatment she receives when living as a woman in poverty. Richer people were often times rude instead of sympathetic. Even employers treated her differently. She could not get a job as a housekeeper because employers reserved that job for “unskilled” people that didn't speak fluent english.

After having her eyes opened by the truth of poverty conditions, Ehrenreich suggests that citizens working minimum wage jobs are making sacrifices so that other citizens can have the privilage of living in better conditions.

Question 17:

            After reading Ehrenreich’s opinion and experiences, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to have a minimum wage job than to have no job at all. With a minimum wage job you have steady income to support yourself and family with. Living conditions with this type of job may not be as good, but at least there is something to depend on. This book opened my eyes and did make me a little angry with how society treats lower-class citizens. I was also angry with how little upper-class citizens seem to care about people living in poverty.

AQ from Andrea Arthofer

Blog Question for All Quiet On the Western Front:

            Erich Maria Remarque adds to the chaotic feeling of war in this book by jumping from topic to topic. By changing what the main focus is frequently, the sudden rush of war is felt more by the reader. The stories he tells about soldiers in the war that may seem somewhat pointless makes people realize that it’s the little things you live for when you’re fighting constantly. He uses the literary device of flashback frequently to help the reader understand that prewar life becomes hazy for soldiers ruined by their experiences. Experiences that he notes reduce humans to nothing more than their animal instincts. Remarque embraces the confusion felt by skipping around a lot. He wants his readers to feel the way a soldier feels in a war, to have a better grasp on the emotional torment of the subject they are indulging in. If he were to have written this book in an orderly, chronological fashion, the novel would not contain these effects. He is making points that tear at the reader’s heart, which is a literary device called pathos. It is with these strategies in which Erich Remarque fully grabs his reader’s attention and gets his point across.

MC from Seth Thill

In The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, humans travel to Mars to make similar colonies as have been formed on Earth. The colonization of Mars in the book is proves to be very similar as the Europeans' colonization of the Americas. Some events in the book are eerily similar to the real American colonizations, like how the Martians caught a disease from the settlers that strongly affected their population, just like in the colonization of America when the Native Americans caught deadly smallpox from the Europeans. When the humans settle on Mars, they completely disregard what the Martians previously had and moved around their homes, just like the Europeans did to the Native Americans. Bradbury uses incredible imagery to paint a picture of the beautiful Mars landscape in the book like when he says "Coming out of space was like coming out of the most beautiful cathedral they had ever seen." The collection of stories as a whole, is a commentary on the destructive and commercial ways of humans. By basically putting the destruction of the land of the Native Americans under a different name, Bradbury shows the extremities of mankind's sadistic ways.

AQ from Seth Thill

   In All Quiet On The Western Front, author Erich Ramarque, rather than going in chronological order with each chapter, frequently jumps around to different time periods in the soldiers' tour of duty. This helps highlight the main aspects of war, rather than having a lot of filler pages that are less important to the plot, as you may have with a typical book in chronological order. This technique also helps symbolize the uncertainty of war. The novel ha a very dark tone and its main focus is the dehumanization of the average soldier when he is out on the frontlines. The narrator, Paul, often describes how he and his fellow soldiers really live only to avoid death while in war. They have been stripped down to their simplest animal instincts so they can survive. Paul consistently points out that he does not even know what he would do after the war, claiming he no longer has any goals. When Paul returns home on leave, he realizes that he sees nothing the same way he did before, and now looks at everything through the jaded eyes of a soldier, further solidifying his fear of his future after the war. The book concludes as grim as it ever had been, some time after the death of Paul's closest friend Ka, Paul dies peacefully in battle, and it explains that he almost looked relieved as he died.

MC from Bethany Smith

In The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, Mars is colonized in a very similar way to the way North America was colonized by the Europeans. The colonizer’s superior technology gave them many advantages over the Natives. They were a far more advanced group. This was the same when the Europeans first came to North America. Their superior farming techniques and naval skills gave them many advantages over the Native Americans. Both the Europeans and the Earth men underestimated the Natives in their “New World”. This made them both very vulnerable. In The Martian Chronicles the colonizers are attacked and fooled countless times by the Natives because they were caught off guard by the Natives’ intellect and talents. The Europeans also underestimated their opponents and therefore suffered many violent attacks. Like when the Europeans brought their own farming techniques to America, the Earth men brought their ideas to mars. One man, Benjamin Driscoll, decided to plant trees on Mars to make it more like his home, rather than adapting to the natural environment. In the end both the colonizers’ and natives’ lives were changed forever. In both cases the colonizers seem to be glad they came.

ND from Bethany Smith

In Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbara travels to three cities across the United States to work in minimum wage jobs and see if she can support herself. She faces homelessness, hunger, sickness, lack of sleep, and issues with her pride. She realizes that it is very difficult for her to support on a minimum wage salary let alone a single mom with a family to take care of. She begins to see that the wealthy have no idea how hard the poor have it. She begins to see poverty in an entirely different way. She no longer sees people struggling with poverty as “the poor”, but instead as real people with problems, talents, and lives like everyone else.

#15.  I don’t think that Americans make excessive demands on the family unit. It isn’t the government’s job to step in and help these people. The government programs that are already in place are enough. Your family is a group of people that you should depend on, and call on when you need help. If the government stepped in and helped everyone, they wouldn’t be doing their job, which is to do what is best for the country as a whole.. If the government tried to give these people money they would have to take money away from other people who worked hard to earn it. I understand that the people living these types of lives have it very tough, but if the government helped some people they would inevitably be hurting others

ND from Set Thill

            In the book Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author decides to run an experiment where she tries to make a living working dead end jobs making minimum wage. This is a dramatic change in Ehrenreich's life an she is faced with many challenges such as finding a cheap enough place to live, buying essentials like food and gas, and working much harder than usual for very little visible compensation. She works as things like a waitress, maid, and Wal Mart employee, and under all of these consequences she finds it arduous to make a living. Along with the low wages of these jobs she makes the point that she underwent very unfair and harsh treatment from management. Ehrenreich points out that while working these jobs, it was increasingly difficult to even find a place to stay that could be paid with the money from these jobs. Throughout the course of the experiment she is forced to live in very minimal apartments, hotel rooms, small cottages, and even in her car. She believes the lower classes are greatly undercompensated and overlooked by the upper classes who she believes ignore that the working class are left with very little fair living conditions. Ehrenreich thinks that low wage deserve much more reparation for the strenuous work they do, such as higher wages and more health benefits.

            1. I have never been homeless, unemployed, without, health insurance, or held down two jobs. The lowest paying job I have ever had is $7.25, and I did need help from m parents for basic things like food and shelter.