Ehrenreich evaluates her performance as a low-wage employee and her success at obtaining food and shelter. Overall, she thinks she did well as a worker and insists that no job is truly “unskilled.” She gives herself a B or B+. When she turns to the discussion of food and housing, Ehrenreich notes that the poor cannot compete with the rich on the housing market. While food is relatively inflation-proof, the cost of housing has sky-rocketed. Meanwhile, wages have not increased based on demand--at least not in a way that adequately accommodates life’s basic necessities.Ehrenreich notes that there are vital problems with the way government determines who is in poverty as well as the way in which the public sector aids these people. Ehrenreich argues that the laws of economics do not always apply to low-wage workers because they often are restricted geographically, are fraught with the anxiety of entering a new job environment, and do not have ample information available to them.
Thoreau never mentions when he knew that he would be a writer, but he probably decided sometime during college that he wanted writing to be his life's work. Apart from an early essay about the seasons that may not be authentic, Thoreau's first surviving compositions are those he wrote for college classes in English that included composition, logic, and public speaking. Thoreau took these classes at Harvard from a professor of rhetoric and oratory named Edward Tyrrel Channing. Channing, who taught a number of outstanding writers, assigned topics for his classes. Some of Channing's topics clearly influenced Thoreau's later work as a writer: for example, he wrote a class essay about "the duty, inconvenience and dangers of conformity, in little things and great." (Early Essays, 105) Seventeen years later, in Walden, he wrote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Fitzgerald uses many different mediums to express his views on The American Dream. In fact, the entire novel can be seen as a commentary on the subject. One symbolic way in which he shows his disenchantment with "The American Dream" is his stark contrast between the haves and the have-nots. East and West Egg are separated to show the difference between new and old money. Fitzgerald comments on the idea that The American Dream is a hoax and one must be born into money in order to reap the benefits. Gatsby, although rich on his own, will never be like Daisy or Tom. The vast lake symbolizes the vast separation between the classes, even if they intermingle at times. Also, the valley of ashes is described so differently than the other places in the novel. Literally "on the other side of the tracks," this place is described using dark colors, and depressing imagery. This symbolizes that the father the classes are, the more separated they can also be seen. The poor will never have what the wealthy do, no matter how much effort and change is made. Gatsby is a prime example of this. He will always be James Gatz inside.
Fitzgerald uses many different mediums to express his views on The American Dream. In