Rhetorical Analysis Of Barbara Ehrenreich's Article

As an investigative approach to write an article on the lives of minimum wage workers for Harper’s magazine, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted her research by assuming multiple low paid positions herself. Her essential goal for this study was to determine how low paid workers survive on their income. She began her adjustment to the working class lifestyle by establishing regulations for herself to eliminate any advantages she could have from her real life. In doing so, she abandoned all of the luxuries that her middle-class career afforded her, such as a comfortable living environment, fresh quality meals, and working independently. Immersing herself into this lifestyle allowed her to witness the arduous circumstances of low wage living

Incorporating such commentary is effective in this study because it elucidates the struggles of the working class that are often unnoticed or avoided by the mainstream middle-class society. Her intentional use of satire and sarcasm challenges her middle-class and educated audience to alter their perspective towards low paying jobs and their workers. By enveloping herself into the marginalized society of the working class, she exposes the audience to the elements of low paying jobs that would not be witnessed by anyone besides employees. Ehrenreich expresses a voice of judgement towards her new coworkers to reflect the common misconception of failure that the middle-class holds towards low paid workers. This strategy enables the reader to reassess poverty and which aspects of it must be focused on in the frequent discourse of impoverished

By becoming a part of the working class, she was able to understand the situations and emotions of her colleagues. Rather than analyzing the economically burdened, she empathizes with them to feel what it is truly like to live on a low income. She describes not only the financial struggle of working in a low paid job, she endures the physical and emotional impacts of the work. During her maid work, Ehrenreich recognized the lack of self-worth that the maids felt because she felt it herself. “We’re just maids .” Nor are we much of anything to anyone else. Even convenience store clerks...seem to look down on us” (Ehrenreich, 100). Although she has not been in the working class during her adult life, she felt the struggle that the workers felt for most of their lives in the short time that she held these jobs. It is only from working these jobs that she recognize that classism encumbers individuals of the working class socially and