Poverty in Everyday Use, Sonny's Blues, and The Cathedral Essay

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

Jonathan Kozol’s Fire in the Ashes is an honest depiction of the hardships and triumphs of families in the South Bronx, New York. In this book, Kozol introduces us to several Hispanic and Black families that he originally met in the Mott Haven/Martinique Hotel in the 1980’s and allows us to view their trajectory in the proceeding 25 years. By allowing the reader a look into the lives of these families, he provides us with a realistic depiction of the disadvantages families living in poverty encounter despite interventions from charity organizations and philanthropic donors. Kozol identifies that without “systematic justice and systematic equity in public education” (Kozol, 2013, pg 304) students in these impoverished neighborhoods will continue to lack the same economic opportunities that may potentially lead them out of the welfare system. Kozol emphasizes lack of stable housing, and unequal educational opportunities, as primarily conditions to perpetuating poverty. Despite the challenges that the families endure, Kozol is able to show that they are resilient.

In her essay “On The Meaning Of Plumbing and Poverty,” Journalist Melanie Scheller examines the cultural identity of the rural poor. The author brings the readers attention to her call to action about poverty in America while using facts and personal background. While caring for a woman in a psychiatric ward, Scheller witnesses the woman’s obsession for flushing the toilets in her unit. This memory creates an opportunity for her to write an essay about growing up in rural North Carolina.

This book weaves the tale of four generations of the Banes family, who lives in Chicago’s poorest neighborhood called North Lawndale. The author spent a year from May 1989 to April 1990 with this family and observed its struggle with the prevailing health care system. The story rotates in the Banes family, Jackie Bane, her husband Robert Bane, their children Latrice, Demarest , Brianna, Jackie's grandmother Mrs. Cora Jackson and Jackie's father and Mrs. Jackson’s son Tommy Markham.

These two stories “Sonny’s Blues” written by James Baldwin and “Everyday Use” written by Alice Walker are both examples of struggle for African American people. These two authors Alice Walker and James Baldwin are both African Americans. Through their writings both writers wanted to critique, analyze and assess the culture that they belong to.

Often times tragic events and circumstances are overlooked due to the withdrawn and unemotional telling of events. While statistics are important, they lack the emotional pull to generate change. In order to make a change, there must be a call for action to the public. A call for action can come in many ways. In regards to poverty in Harlem, New York, Muriel Rukeyser, a famous twentieth century poet from New York, called for action through her poetry. Rukeyser used imagery and symbolism in her poem, “Ballad of Orange and Grape,” to tell a story of poverty-stricken Harlem in order to advocate for education to combat poverty. Specifically, her vivid description of the setting and its glimpses of hope allows readers to empathize with the citizens of the city and crave change. In response to her poem, I felt moved to find a legitimate solution to mend a broken system. Research shows that revamping the public school system can create a domino effect, leading to higher quality of life and a way out of poverty for the people in the United States.

The children start as one united group.  They are a community in their own.  Slowly, rules started to get broken, individuals began to leave, and the group broke apart.  The one thing that causes this break-up is the beast. The beast means different things to everyone, but each boy is afraid of it.

Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.

The boys don’t put into practice their teachings from church/school on the island, but become savage beasts. This shows us that man is civilized in our society, only because of the fear for higher authority, not because that’s their nature.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are all devices that Barbara Ehrenreich effectively uses throughout her novel Nickel and Dimed to prove that America needs to address the commonly overlooked issue of poverty within every community. It is important that she uses all three devices because they help support her argument by increasing her credibility, connecting to the readers’ emotions, and appealing to their sense of logic. The combination of these devices puts a sense of urgency on the problem Ehrenreich is addressing and therefore creates an effective argument.

They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to the other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone. (Baldwin 273)

Continuing with racism, it sets a dark undercurrent that flows through "Sonny's Blues". It is faintly referenced directly, but its presence can be felt continuously. For example, Baldwin mentions beat-up housing projects (a.k.a the ghetto: a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.) that rise out of Harlem like ..."rocks in the middle of the boiling sea"... (Baldwin 566). The projects represent the impact of racism on a oppressed community. Likewise, much of the narrator's anxiety on behalf of his students can be attributed to the fact that they, like Sonny, are young African American men living

In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” one of the most pertinent themes throughout the story is the contrast and duality of light and darkness. More specifically, the author explores this theme by using light and darkness to explain the characters coming to terms with their realities and the realities of many people who live in their community. The theme also is key in explaining the relationship between Sonny and the narrator. In this paper, I intend to explain the significance of the tension of identifying one’s reality in “Sonny’s Blues,” by exploring the many instances that Baldwin uses light and darkness to explore one’s reality.

Toni Cade Bambara addresses how knowledge is the means by which one can escape out of poverty in her story The Lesson. In her story she identifies with race, economic inequality, and literary epiphany during the early 1970’s. In this story children of African American progeny come face to face with their own poverty and reality. This realism of society’s social standard was made known to them on a sunny afternoon field trip to a toy store on Fifth Avenue. Through the use of an African American protagonist Miss Moore and antagonist Sylvia who later becomes the sub protagonist and White society the antagonist “the lesson” was ironically taught.

Lives are diverse. Every being that passes by on the street, at school, at work, anywhere lives a completely unique life different from any other individual. Each person that one could meet has attended different schools, travelled to different places, and lived under different circumstances; they all pass by in an instant without a second thought or even a passing glance. These several diverse experiences sculpt diverse individuals with diverse thoughts, opinions, dreams, and motives. However, in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator must converse with an individual that lives an extremely dissimilar life from his own. A blind man, friends with the narrator’s wife and a recent widower, has come to live with the narrator for a while. This sudden change in the narrator’s life does not come easy because of his inherent arrogance and prejudice. Nevertheless, the blind man remains polite and shows the narrator how similar, yet still different their lives are through example as well as an explicit exercise where he holds the narrator’s hands while he draws a cathedral in order to “see” what the cathedral looks like. To assist the reader in fully grasping the impact of this breakthrough in the narrator’s life regarding perspective and various types of human realities, Carver employs a large number of stylistic elements to enhance his writing.