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Jo Goodwin Parker Poverty

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Jo Goodwin Parker Poverty
The essay “What is poverty” written by Jo Goodwin Parker in 1971, is about a poor woman with a baby trying to express what poverty is, how it feel like and that it’s not as easy as everyone things it is, to come out of poverty.
The essay is written by Jo Goodwin Parker in order to mainly target the rich and wealthy people that jude the poor people for not achieving anything. The line “You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house, “Anybody can be clean” produces a sense, of her discussing with one of the people judging her for not being clean, in the reader. The use of “you” evokes in the reader a feeling of her accusing him, given that it is not as easy as he thinks to come out of poverty. Also the “you” drags in the reader
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By giving it the characteristics of a human being, poverty becomes more real for the audience. Also the repetition in the first Paragraph “Listen to me … Listen to me” is used in order to directly from the beginning drag in the reader and it also demand his involvement: He should listen. It demands that the reader is quite and listens to the points she wants to bring up. Also the first sentence, which is a rhetorical question “You ask me what is poverty” creates a power relation ship between reader and writer, better off person vs angry and poor person. The first paragraph has a lot of stylistic devices in order to rap the compliance of the reader and also demands for his involvement in the discussion. Ellipses are the main stylistic devices used in the first paragraph. It is used to make the reader read carefully and also thoughtfully and it prepare the audience for the essay. Also the use of Alliteration “strong smell” is significant in oder to make it clear for the reader how bad it smells. Stylistic devices are used very intelligent through out the essay so that the reader doesn't lose his attention and listens to everything she has to say. Jo Goodwin Parker uses the language through out her essay mainly to convey the message of poverty to the

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