Short Story: Caroline Jennings

“It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream and struggle.”

In the article, “What’s So Bad about Being Poor” by Charles Murray, Murray states that “One of the great barriers to a discussion of poverty and social policy in the 1980s is that so few people who talk about poverty have ever been poor”. He discusses how, contrary to present day, in America up until the 1950s those in positions of influence and power included a sizable amount of people who had been raised “dirt-poor”. Murray states that, because of this, many Americans with their lack of exposure to such people, they develop a skewed perspective of what poverty is. On account of this, Murray challenges the reader with several thought experiments which he uses to help the reader come to certain conclusions that convey his message.

The past few weeks had been hot, dry, and rainless. A drought. Rain had not fallen for three months. Though, despite the drought, the O’Leary family had been having an exceptional October. The O’Leary family consisted of Mrs. O’Leary, her husband and 5 children. Mr. O’Leary worked as a laborer, as Mrs. O’Leary kept with the cows and the children. The

In the 20th century, the average home life in rural Oklahoma was full of hard workers in the pursuit of the picture-perfect home surrounded by plentiful land. As the sun rises over the land in the morning with a red hue, it signals the commencement of the day ahead. The farmer has already been awake since before the sun broke the horizon, preparing his little equipment and his animals for his land’s work. The farmer’s wife is in the kitchen, cooking her husband a warm breakfast as a sign of her gratitude. Their children wake, running into the kitchen, bellies growling. After gobbling up the breakfast, they run outside to play and do chores of their own. The rest of the farmer’s wife’s day is spent cleaning, cooking, and looking after the

Despite the generational birth and childhood struggles as depicted in Three Generations of Native American women’s birth experience by Joy Harjo, The Black Mountain, 1977 by Donald Antrim shows a different type relationship between generations. The young native women experience reflects a struggling time of teenage pregnancy. The author expression that the woman made was “I was a poor, mixed-blood woman heavy with a child who would suffer the struggle of poverty, the legacy of loss.” (Nadlehaft, 2008 pg.126).

It was a quite a normal fall day out here in Louisiana. The year was 1930, my daughter and I had been out working in the barnyard. “Lauren, work faster the guest will be here soon for Thanksgiving dinner.” I exclaimed to Lauren as she was cleaning the pigsty. Soon we were to have our family and friends come to visit us for Thanksgiving. I don’t necessarily like having guest, since they’re always a lot of cleaning do. Actually, cleaning wasn’t the problem since we lived in a very small house out in the country. The problem was food was very scarce for us, so we worked extremely hard. You see, out here in Louisiana it wasn’t easy to be wealthy so half of the town was what you would call ‘poor’.We can’t provide them with a lot of food,

The indication of morning had approached; wind halted while the air became temperate. Morning routine of the birds, fetching food for their children, communicating with the others, hatching their eggs. Newly seeded grass shooted out, growing like weeds. The air reminded Mary of a camping trip when she was younger in Yosemite Park. Pinecones and trees gave her the happy memories, ones of her husband and her only child before the accident.

The Mirror Image During the depression, the town of Maycomb, AL is old and run-down; this mirrors the characters as they passively travel through the days. The first two chapters of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are very uninteresting, and do not contain much action. The first chapter is used to introduce the town and characters. The narrator, “Scout” Finch, is arguing with her older brother, Jem. They are debating who is to blame for the breaking of Jem’s arm.

“I grew up there, thought I’d spend my entire life calling that city ‘Home.’ But it didn’t workout that way. I learned to love it here too,” Dustin told his neighbour’s grandkids, remembering the horrific event that tore him away from his home and ended his career. His neighbour, Sally, and her family were the only people who accepted Dustin; they shared something in common, the disaster. Sally lost her husband in the tragedy that destroyed Dustin’s once handsome face.

In Sweetwater Hills there was no need for an alarm clock to you wake up in the morning. Or even a clock at all. The resonant church bells in the town’s hall would ring every hour throughout the day and could be heard from miles away, even beyond the vast forests that surround most the city. Either that or the roosters in Norma’s farm would have done the job. But, those. Those were the good days.

“For now I just want to know more about Jenny Morse other than she has a kind heart and is to receive the key to the city for selfishly helping people in need. I’m sure this whole situation with the restraining order had shaken up the mayor.”

“I’ve never lost my fierce grudge against poverty. It is the most savage of all human afflictions, claiming victims who can’t mobilize their efforts against it, who often lack strength to digest what little food they scrounge up to survive” (1).

As I lay in bed on a fall evening, an open window lets in a cool breeze accompanied with sounds of crickets and a faint train horn blare. As I peer out into the dark night sky I see an ebony sky glittered with stars. A sense of calm washes over me and I know I’m right where I’m meant to be! It’s a small town, Galt, with a population under 23,000. I didn’t grow up here, but it’s where I’ve lived for the past ten years, and it’s where I’ve chosen to raise my children. The town is a combination of city and farm living. Children from the same school either take a long bus ride through the desolate and diminishing backroads every morning, or a short walk through the peaceful and charming subdivisions to reach their destination. There is a mixture

Although it was hard for Nick at first to accept, he learned to accept it, allowing him to learn and grow as an individual. From his experience, he learned that being impoverished was tough. As a result, he was able to grow as an individual by getting himself out of poverty by getting a college education. As a result of his education, he got out of poverty. These people’s experiences, show how devastating and common poverty is in the United States by pointing out society’s negative stigmatizations of poor people. These negative stigmatizations included lazy, hopelessness, unemployed, and government assisted

A few years have passed since the kind Miss Joyce drove the Beechams to San Joaquin Valley. Much had changed. The brown and white cottage was bursting with life. The day starts just as dawn breaks. Rose-Ellen, Dick and Jimmie begin getting dressed for school. Rose-Ellen and Dick are in the 9th reader and Jimmie is in the second. After hard work and much patience he learned how to read. It turns out he has a knack for math and greatly enjoys it. Daddy and Grandpa get ready to work in the grapevines. They are managers and help make the grapevine workers do their job. Grandma begins making breakfast and rouses up Sally. Sally’s still too young for school so she stays home with Grandma to help around the house and run small errands. Jimmie is still a little bit slow and sometimes complains about joint pain.