In an interview about his book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of

Does Barbara Ehrenreich seem to be exaggerating the workplace as she describes it in this selection? If you have worked in a restaurant, does her description of the environment match your experience?

What is Ehrenreichs attitude toward her coworkers? Does she appreciate them? Is she condescending? How do you react to her observations?

Early in the selection, as Ehrenreich pays bills left over from her real life, she reflects, [My] old life is beginning to look exceedingly strange (para. 8). At the end, she asks, So why didnt I intervene [with George]? (para. 18). Does the experience of serving in Florida change Ehrenreich? Cite specific passages to support your response.

According to Ehrenreich, who is to blame for the situation of those who work at low-paying jobs in restaurants? Are there heroes and villains, or does the workplace itself change the people who are part of it?

Overall, what is your attitude toward Ehrenreich and her method of research? Does choosing to live as one of the working poor for a short time as a kind of visitor or tourist give her an accurate picture of their lives? Explain whether you find her presentation of them respectful, convincing, sympathetic, patronizing, superficial, or some combination of these. Cite specific passages.

Ehrenreichs essay delivers strong implications about the U.S. economy. What is the relationship between the macroeconomy and the microeconomy in the essay? Which is more prominent? Identify places where she addresses each. What implications does her essay make about each?

Discuss specific instances of humor in this selection. Is it primarily ironic humor? Aggressively sarcastic? Affectionately amusing? Cite specific passages in your response

What elements of fiction does Ehrenreich employ? Consider such elements as figurative language, dialogue, narrative commentary, and description of people and settings

In this selection, Ehrenreich does not state a thesis or indicate directly what her purpose is; instead, she works by inference and implication. What is her purpose? State it directly in a sentence that begins, In this selection, Ehrenreich . . .

At times, Ehrenreich seems to raise tangential issues. When she describes her coworker smoking, for instance, she writes: Because work is what you do for others; smoking is what you do for yourself. I dont know why the antismoking crusaders have never grasped the element of defiant self-nurturance that makes the habit so endearing to its victims as if, in the American workplace, the only thing people have to call their own is the tumors they are nourishing and the spare moments they devote to feeding them (para. 2). What is the effect of this commentary? What is its relevance to Ehrenreichs overall purpose?

How does Ehrenreich establish her ethos in this selection? What part does her relationship with George play in her appeal to ethos?

Who is Ehrenreichs audience? Base your answer on the tone you detect in specific passages.

Paragraph 30 concludes, But none of this damage touches the best part of yourself. What, as implied by Crawford, is the best part of yourself? Do you agree?

How effective is the rhetorical question that concludes paragraph 36?

Crawford concludes that the economy will be improved by enlightened selfinterest (para. 39). Do you agree with his assessment?

In an interview about his book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, Crawford has said,

Identify the simple sentences in the following selection from “In the Strawberry Fields” by Eric Schlosser. The few remaining labor camps for single men are grim places. I toured one that was a group of whitewashed buildings surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire. Desolate except for a rosebush in front of the manager’s office, it looked like a holding pen or an old minimum-security prison. A nearby camp was reputed to be one of the best of its kind. Inside the barracks, the walls were freshly painted and the concrete floor was clean. A typical room was roughly twelve feet by ten feet, unheated, and occupied by four men. Sheets of plywood separated the steel cots. For $80 a week, a price far too high for most migrants, you got a bed and two meals a day. I’ve seen nicer horse barns. Nevertheless, the labor camps are often preferable to the alternatives. When migrants stay in residential neighborhoods, they must pool their resources. In Watsonville three to four families will share a small house, seven or eight people to a room. Migrants routinely pay $100 to $200 a month to sleep in a garage with anywhere from four to ten other people. A survey of garages in Soledad found 1,500 inhabitants — a number roughly equal to one-eighth of the town’s official population. At the peak of the harvest the housing shortage becomes acute. Migrants at the labor camps sometimes pay to sleep in parked cars. The newest migrant workers, who lack family in the area and haven’t yet learned the ropes, often sleep outdoors in the wooded sections of Prunedale, trespassing, moving to a different hiding place each night. On hillsides above the Salinas Valley, hundreds of strawberry pickers have been found living in caves.

Revise the selection in Exercise 1 by turning it into a series of short simple sentences. Then revise it again to eliminate the simple sentences entirely by turning every sentence into a compound, complex, or compound-complex sentence. How do your revisions change the effect? Read the original excerpt; then read your revisions aloud, and listen to the difference.

Identify the short simple sentences and fragments in the following passage from Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today by Phyllis Rose. Discuss their effect. Someone told me about a Soviet migr who practices English by declaiming, at random, sentences that catch his fancy. One of his favorites is, Fifty percent off all items today only. Refugees from Communist countries appreciate our supermarkets and discount department stores for the wonders they are. An Eastern European scientist visiting Middletown wept when she first saw the meat counter at Waldbaums. On the other hand, before her year in America was up, her pleasure turned sour. She wanted everything she saw. Her approach to consumer goods was insufficiently abstract, too materialistic. We Americans are beyond a simple, possessive materialism. Were used to abundance and the possibility of possessing things. The things, and the possibility of possessing them, will still be there next week, next year. So today we can walk the aisles calmly. It is a misunderstanding of the American retail store to think we go there necessarily to buy. Some of us shop. Theres a difference. Shopping has many purposes, the least interesting of which is to acquire new articles. We shop to cheer ourselves up. We shop to practice decision-making. We shop to be useful and productive members of our class and society. We shop to remind ourselves how much is available to us. We shop to remind ourselves how much is to be striven for. We shop to assert our superiority to the material objects that spread themselves before us. Shoppings function as a form of therapy is widely appreciated. You dont really need, lets say, another sweater. You need the feeling of power that comes with buying or not buying it. You need the feeling that someone wants something you have even if its just your money. To get the bene fit of shopping, you neednt actually purchase the sweater, any more than you have to marry every man you flirt with. In fact, window-shopping, like flirting, can be more rewarding, the same high without the distressing commitment, the material encumbrance. The purest form of shopping is provided by garage sales. A connoisseur goes out with no goal in mind, open to whatever may come his or her way, secure that it will cost very little. Minimum expense, maximum experience. Perfect shopping.

Find six examples of short simple sentences or fragments in the selections presented in this chapter. Explain their effect in the context of the paragraphs in which you find them.