They Re Not Your Husband Summary

The short story “Sweat,” by Zora Neale Hurston, seems to exemplify the epitome of a bad marriage. Hurston uses foreshadowing and irony to demonstrate the disintegrated relationship between the abusive husband and the diligent wife. Throughout the story, it becomes obvious that the husband does not oblige by the motto, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Hurston’s use of irony and foreshadowing helps reveal the fact that “the good will prevail” and Sykes will finally get what he deserves.

The poor is also from the changing labor market. In recent years, the labor market has gone from industrial to service related jobs. This itself has eliminated many good paying jobs for people who has little education. These people usually have a dead-end jobs, with no benefits at minimum wages that does not pay enough to pay someone out of the poor social class. This is the major cause of poverty.

Poverty, the state of being extremely poor, exists all over America! There are several different types of poverty, and the causes of poverty. Most people think of poverty as just somebody who is homeless and has no job, somebody who has no money to support the basic needs of life, and wears ragged clothing and lives under a bridge. What people don’t know is there are people living in poverty that have jobs and make money but live so poorly that they are categorized with people that live in absolute poverty.

The United States, a place where anyone can “pick themselves up by the bootstraps” and realize the American dream of a comfortable lifestyle. Well, for over 30 million Americans this is no longer possible. Though we live in the richest and most powerful country in the world there are many who are living under or at the precipice of the poverty level, “While the United States has enjoyed unprecedented affluence, low-wage employees have been testing the American doctrine that hard work cures poverty” (The Working Poor, 4). This translates to families of four making around 18,850$ a year. And as soon as they find work or move just slightly above that 18,850$ a year (which is still a meager and deprived way to

In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver the unnamed narrator and his wife are constantly arguing. Cathedral takes place in New York at the narrator’s and his wife’s home during the early 1980’s. The narrator is not a good husband, drinks a lot, and smokes marijuana. The narrator is jealous of Robert because he can connect better with the narrator’s wife. He is not a good husband and is judgemental. The wife is lonely and wants to be understood by her husband. She writes poems to Robert because her husband does not appreciate her art like he does. Robert is the narrator’s wife’s friend who comes to visit, he is blind but can see the world through his heart. The narrator’s wife used to work for Robert. They were both really close and

Raymond Carver utilizes his character of the husband, who is also the narrator, in his short story "Cathedral." From the beginning of the story the narrator has a negative personality. He lacks compassion, has a narrow mind, is detached emotionally from others, and is jealous of his wife's friendship with a blind man named Robert. He never connects with anyone emotionally until the end of this story.

Being poor can mean something to one individual compared to another. Whether it is not having clean water to drink or not being able to afford a new laptop. Poverty is very broad, without a single definition.

In New York City, Jeannette is surprised how quickly she is able to find a job and get work as a reporter, which is her goal in life. She and Lori eat

The living conditions of poor families is terrible due to the fact that they are not bringing in as much money as they could because of low

Throughout both in-class discussions, and David Shipler’s “The Working Poor: Invisible in America” we learned being poor in America is anything but easy. Even with all of our government assistance programs such as Medicaid and Welfare, many family generation after generation seem to fall below the poverty line and create a life of struggle and long way out for their families. When Shipler is explaining different families and their lac of self control in saving the little money they do earn, it makes you question if the have the know how to get out of poverty, or even in some cases even want to due to their different spending habits than successful people, falling into credit traps, and buying the un-necessary.

In “They’re not your husband”, Earl told his wife “I think you’d better consider going on a diet. I mean it. I’m serious you could stand to lose a few pounds” (Carver 2). This example clearly showed the comments from the businessmen impacted Earl in wanting his wife Doreen to look a certain way and fit in with society.

In the documentary “Poverty in America: Born with a Wooden Spoon” we get an in depth look about what it is like to live in poverty in America. In the early moments of the documentary we are informed that the poor people of America are a diverse group of people. These people can be put into sub group and each of them has certain different characteristics. The first and most obvious group is the homeless or otherwise known as the urban poverty. These people are scattered around inner cities and it is very easy to see how hard their life is and what kind of struggle they are going through. The next group is the group of situational poverty. Situational poverty comes about when something abrupt occurs in someone’s life that causes him or her to be forced into poverty. Examples of this can be divorce, losing ones jobs, or sudden illness. Another different kind of poverty is the working class poverty. These are the people that have jobs but make so little that they cannot get themselves above the poverty line. Next are immigrants they provide cheap necessary labor for the country to flourish but yet they are still consider to be apart of poverty. They often do not even work for themselves, they leave their homelands and live on their own just so they can get jobs to send back money home to their families. The middle class can also have people in poverty. They try to cover it up by getting themselves into loads of credit card debt and eventually fall below the poverty line to the

Marriage is a full-time job on its own and people should communicate with each other in order to have a healthy marriage for them to love and appreciate each other so they can grow old together. Most of us know by now that the fairy tale happily ever after stories are full of holes. Carver emphasizes that when there is no communication in the marriage the wife starts to feel unhappy and frustrated with him. The wife’s attitude with her husband suggests that the marriage doesn’t seem to be working for her. Carver states, “My wife finally took her eyes off the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeling she didn’t like what she saw. I shrugged (38). ” There was unhappiness in the marriage and the narrator and his wife didn’t seem to get along. In other words the

Poverty has been on a incline since the economic downturn in 2007. Poverty is defined as “the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount”, but a more modern definition used today is “in state of being extremely poor”. According to “Poverty in the United States” a report done by Congressional Digest, the poverty line in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line, and was 2.7 points higher in this year than in 2007. The article also stated that in 2012, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty was 11.8 percent and 9.5 million and the median income for households was $51,017, which means many of these households have students who become eligible for free lunches. In Lindsey Layton’s article “Most Public

The poverty level in the U.S. is normally based on annual income figures. In 1995, a family was identified as poor if their income equaled $15,569. Adjustments, however, vary with inflation and family size. In short, by current U.S. standards, many poor people elsewhere in the world would be living near or in absolute poverty, surviving on just over $200-$500 per year (Funk & Wagnall 1).