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Summary Of Where Sweatshops Are A Dream By Nicholas D. Kristof

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In “Where Sweatshops Are A Dream” by Nicholas D. Kristof, Kristof uses his experience living in East Asia to argue his positive outlook on sweatshops. He also uses Phnom Penh as an example to show why working in the sweatshops would be a dream for the families living there. Kristof wants to persuade his readers that the best way to help people in poor countries is to promote manufacturing there, not campaign against them. Kristof begins his essay by painting the picture of how his village looks outside of the sweatshop. The problem he identifies is even though Americans want to “fight back” for “exploiting too many people” but really these people look at sweatshops as dream jobs. Kristof assumes that the readers are Americans he refers to in the essay. He also assumes that the readers are people who …show more content…

He is showing us that no matter how strongly we feel negatively about sweatshops, these people are grateful for them. In order to accomplish this he appeals to our emotions. For example, Kristof uses the image of a 13 year-old girl who is dressed in clothes she dug out of the garbage and she says, “It’s dirty and smelly here, a factory is better”. This girl is used because it shows us that even though we would like to think we are helping these people by shutting down these factories or making them take better care of their employees, we aren’t. We are just making these people’s lives harder because all they want is a job and if you push rules onto these sweatshops they will just shut down and move to better off parts of the country. Kristof also appeals to ethos by trying to prove his credibility on this subject. He states, “my views on sweatshops are shaped by years of living in East Asia watching as living standards soar because of sweatshop jobs.” This shows us that Kristof is not an outsider assuming what these people want, but that he has been inside this mess and he knows exactly how these people

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