Nickel and Dimed: Analysis
“In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainable” by Bertrand Piccard. This quote will help show how tough some people can be in order to come out of poverty. As Barbara Ehrenreich was given the assignment to test how people survive through poverty. She decides to do this in three different locations in Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. She starts off her journey in Florida where we will find out how hard it actually is to survive as the working-poor. As her journey takes off we will discover how she deals with race, class, and gender issues as she works to maintain everything. Through her time as a server, we will she if she was able to make it through the working poor class with ease or as a struggle. From a sociological perspective, we can analyze her experiment easily as she visits three different locations trying to keep her head above water. Ehrenreich begins her…show more content… Annette, a twenty-year-old server who is six months pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend, lives with her mother, a postal clerk, and Marianne, who is a breakfast server, and her boyfriend is paying $170 a week for a one-person trailer. Billy, who at $10 an hour is the wealthiest of us, lives in the trailer he owns, paying only the $400-a-month lot fee and the other white cook, Andy, lives on his dry-docked boat, which, as far as I can tell from his loving descriptions, can't be more than twenty feet long. Tina, another server, and her husband are paying $60 a night for a room in the Days Inn. Joan, who had fooled me with her numerous and tasteful outfits, lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina's motel room” (Ehrenreich
