Nickel and Dimed Part 2: Evaluation

Barbara Ehrenreich's novel was one of the most eye-opening things I've ever read. After traveling to 3 different parts of America and working "unskilled" jobs for minimum wage or less, Barbara wrote her experiences down so that middle and upper class Americans could see the people we have been blind to for so long. In her Evaluation chapter, Ehrenreich writes of her "success" at preforming the jobs (in fact, this "success" was intentional mediocracy in order to preserve her strength during never-ending shifts on her feet) and ultimate failure at keeping herself housed and fed in each of the situations.

Since Ehrenreich no longer is using her personal experience to draw emotion from her audience, in her evaluation she uses logic and statistics to back her argument instead. She argues that the pricing of housing is too high because of "the market, stupid. When the rich and poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance" (199). To validate her argument, Ehrenreich incorporates statistic after statistic, based on her own personal calculations and those of governmental evaluations of the low-wage working class, throughout her novel.

Another effective rhetorical device was Ehrenreich's incorporation of an analogy between low-wage workers and rats to demonstrate the damage to self-esteem that unskilled labor can cause. Barbara writes, "there is ample evidence that animals - rats and monkeys, for example - that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming 'depressed' in humanlike ways....[humans] depend for our self-image on the humans immediately around us - to the point of altering our perceptions of the world so as to fit in with theirs" (211). This analogy provides further understanding for the audience, who can easily recall times when they've made, say, their dog feel ashamed by telling him he has been bad, and then relate this experience to their knowledge of humans. This draws sympathy from the audience, and effectively helps open their eyes to the plights of the poor, and perhaps even donate their time and energy to helping fix the problems described in the novel.

Overall, Ehrenreich's Evaluation chapter effectively helped draw conclusion to her novel and give her readers the "so what?" they needed.