Tichi’s assessment of Ehrenreich

Tichi’s assessment of Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed observes it as a contemporary muckraker novel that echoes the precedent initial writers of this genre such as Upton Sinclair, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. Tichi notes that Enrenreich’s novel amongst many others who have contributed to this insightful genre highlights contemporary society issues in unfair paid work and the harsh living conditions people below the poverty line thus have to endure in order to struggle to survive. This book amongst many others in its contemporary era is used as an example to provide the exposé of a capitalist America that is profiting unjustly( in any form of human rights), off the victims of the poor labour force in America. As described by Tichi “they deserve a corporate culture that is not willing to sacrifice people in the pursuit of profits.” This thus raises the realization that America is in a terrible state of a split nation between the desperate poor, and the excessive rich, which can and should be changed seeing that it is one of the most richest nations globally.

What Tichi highlights having not read the text since year one is that I initially didn’t read the book as being ‘melodramatic’, to me I was engrossed in the narrative as it being represented as a documentary text, and oversaw the fact that Ehrenreich speaks out and “doubles both as narrator and as central character.” The feelings of frustration with the inadequate political and social system in place to try and stop people from suffering below the poverty line, transforms the narrative from an investigative document to comments that expose the angry and disappointed sentiment by Ehrenreich. As described by Tichi, “Barbara the character, lets loose her feelings in a broadly satirical barrage that reinforces nickel and dimed as civic melodrama.” However, there is obviously a reason why it was written with an angle. Otherwise for it to be a dull factual insight, no one would connect emotionally to the atrocities that Ehrenreich exposes and the book would not be considered to be published, as there would be a lack of interest in buying it. Further, Ehrenreich would not have been as successful making it on the top sellers list, having reached out to so many people interested in what she had revealed.
With the insights into the inequality of people’s living conditions, muckraker novels have been successful with its ability to have such an impact on their audience and change the political and social policies in practice. Tichi thus emphasised the importance of this, and without such stylish and emotional writing from other previous muckraker novels, which connected to audiences over one hundred years before, such reform would not have been taken into action. One important resultant to the muckraker genre is Roosevelt reacting to Sinclair’s novel, which introduced the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
In considering the reaction to what happened then, it makes me question whether the political use of these texts are not as effective now as they have been in the past, when Sinclair’s book emphasised and propagated the need for socialism. It seems like whilst people are easy to frown and feel sorry for the poor, they are however not willing to protest much on their behalf, despite the minor protests by students in the ‘janitors for justice’ campaign. What difference have these texts really made in comparison to their predecessors? Such an example of people’s non conformity to make a difference to the poor can be perceived in the debate over Obama’s health reform where there is much hostility nationwide for this service industry to be changed in favour of low income citizens.