Short Story: John Mason

Had Jeannette never experienced poverty, had she never had to make do with what she had, she would never have thought to create her own braces. Hence, because poverty forces her to manage with the little she has throughout all of her childhood, Jeannette gains resourcefulness. Poverty’s final gift to Jeannette and her siblings is the desire to survive. Throughout her childhood, Jeannette is forced to survive. She must survive burns from a freak accident and cuts from falling out of a car. She must survive constant moving around and repeated incidents with sexual predators. All of these incidents instill in Jeannette a desire to survive. As a junior in high school, Jeannette flees to New York City where she finishes high school and begins college. Jeannette works hard to support herself but eventually runs out of money. Instead of quitting and falling through the cracks, Jeannette works harder; she refuses to give up and continues to live her life in the face of difficult circumstances. Thus, the Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle changed my views about poverty by revealing that poverty can produce more than negative outcomes; it can foster resiliency, ingenuity, and a desire to succeed.

In the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” a man is evicted from his apartment he has a young son to take care of, the boy’s mother says she can’t take care of him on her own and is leaving so he needs to stay with him. They have nowhere to go so they have to stay in different homeless shelters, the father Chris is very smart but hadn’t been able to get a good job. He had been selling portable x-ray machines to doctor’s offices and he ended up selling all of them but it wasn’t enough to help pay rent because the IRS had wiped out his account for not paying

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance talks about his rise from the poor, working class Hillbillies of the Rust Belt to the more affluent middle class. In doing so, he talks about the work needed to move up the economic ladder (to a different social class), expressing that it is always possible but very difficult. Vance talks about the struggles he faced within his family and his community, as well as how he overcame them. Vance’s reason to write this book was because he accomplished something ordinary, which does not happen to most children that grow up like him.

Many people tend to take things for granted. We overlook the things that some people wished they had so they can live without struggle. It usually just comes so easily for us and we don’t realize how hard other people’s lives are. Jeannette Walls knows firsthand what it’s like to be without these modern luxuries. In her memoir, “The Glass Castle” she writes about how she sometimes grew up without things like a place to live, clothes to wear, food on the table, electricity to power the house and keep her warm. In her upbringing, her parents never really supplied her with the things she needs or took very good care of her so she learned how to survive with the little she got. She learns throughout her life that she should never take anything for granted and to appreciate the good things in life because she doesn’t get most of the essentials that other people have normally. Throughout the story she always knew to be grateful and value every little thing she got because she didn’t get much.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it

As the great philosopher Heraclitus once said, “There is nothing permanent but change.” In “The Circuit” by Francisco Jiménez- set in America around the 1960’s- a young boy named Panchito (‘Franky’), his brother, younger siblings, and mother and father are shown overcoming draining circumstances and appalling housing situations that could at best be described as ‘fit for a pig.’ His family came from Mexico, but moved to America to start a new life and to hopefully earn more money through farming. Jiménez explains the many hardships of his life through descriptions of temporary, termite infested, hole filled living spaces and long, tiring hours of physical labor under the sun that in return earned him less than twenty dollars a day. Panchito,

Philip shares with me his personal experiences working with the individuals who found themselves living on the streets during the years of 1986-1996. He explains why eventually he dealt solely with those individuals who would not go in to the missions and shelters or even accept food from the mobile soup wagons. Philip relives the moment that he first realized that houseless people were not in their current situation because of a life misled or because they were lazy or criminal, as may be the common

It has been 20 years since Marc Johnston, my guardian, graduated from college. When he looks back at all the things that he has been through since he moved out of his parents’ house, his life has never been the same. He had to learn and struggle like an infant once again because he never learned how to be independent. However, this time, he doesn’t have his parents to bail him out like he did before. Marc realized he had to put some big boy’s pants on.

So many people in the American society live paycheck to paycheck and are one financial catastrophe away from financial ruin. In my own experience, after my husband’s employer continually embezzled from employees and clients, we found ourselves in a terrifying position. Jobless, penniless, and entrenched in mountains of subsequent debt, we were acquainted with the terror many American’s face while struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over our family. Just as the chapter 9 in our textbook describes, Aaron and his wife quickly realized that their income was “no longer sufficient to meet their needs,” (Openstax Intro to Sociology, 2015), we found ourselves in the same position. During my husband’s search for a new job, he began doing all he could to keep food on the table. He participated in tree removal, a laughable wage for hard physical labor. In desperation, I took a full time babysitting job looking after two very difficult little girls for a measly $250 a week. Looking back, although the situation was terrible and trying, we cannot wish it away. The situation taught us what mattered. There were so many things my family took for granted. The situation opened our eyes to the trials and suffering of many people in our society and allowed us to develop compassion, love, and understanding. Now, as we think back to our own struggles, it is much easier to reach out

Mason felt a distinct difference from the way she and her family were living compared to the ones living in town. Her family lived off of their land and made use of all available resources, while others bought what they needed. Although having everything they needed to survive, she still felt they lived in “psychological poverty”. However, she also realized they were poor because they owned their land and was able to support themselves from what they had.

Rodney was only a small child when his grandfather died, but he can still remember the relief he felt when he got the news. His grandfather, like most at the time, was a veteran from WWI. He was a great and honorable man before the war when he worked for the railroad. He had values. He had morals. When Rodney’s grandfather came back from the war he was placed on disability because of a gas attack that damaged his lungs just enough so that he could receive welfare from the government. Because he was getting free money from the government during the Great Depression, Rodney’s grandfather became lazy and spent the day drinking and smoking marijuana. He also became abusive to his wife and only daughter.

The creators of “In Excelsis Deo”, an episode of The West Wing, deserve praise for showcasing the treatment of Veterans back from war, and the homelessness epidemic veterans face. There is an assortment of feelings that can be felt in this episode including pity, anguish, and hope. Toby describes the way the police handled Walter Hufnagle, after finding him dead in a park, describing it as an “unimportant” case. This Korean War veteran suffered homelessness and dies from being exposed on the streets. To add salt to the injury, the veteran has no family near, except a brother, who is also homeless. The episode strikes a nerve since it acknowledges the national failure to highly regard veterans. The episode gives hope that the elected officials

The lack of dignity that these individuals feel is a direct effect of society’s disrespect for the lower class. The stereotypes of the homeless conceived by upper social classes, cause the lower class to lose any respectable role they may have in society. A homeless man in Oberlin, Ohio says, “Many of us historically invisible people, in our quest for visibility, have chosen to take the routes of organization and alliance building. Often we tend to find that our muted voices have more resonance, bass, and credibility within these snugly, institutionally sanctioned cubby holes” (Laymon). After failing to get sufficient help through

On the blazing hot plains of Africa lived a lion named Mason. He was a fairly intelligent lion, but at the same time he was lazy and very unmotivated. Currently, he he was in highschool, and just like any other high school he was always under some sort of stress. There were tests every week, a project due in a couple of days, and usually about 1 or 2 hours of homework to do every night, even though he didn’t always do them the night before. However, he consistently managed to score a ninety or above on all his test, but he constantly struggled with being motivated to do any sort of extra work that would be very beneficial for himself. He never tried joining any clubs, learning a sport, or playing an instrument. Instead, he’d rather lay around

In a different, yet similar perspective Charmion Browne discusses what it is like growing up in homeless