What is poverty? by Jo Goodwin Parker
What is Poverty? – Jo Goodwin Parker
First impressions:
One thing that the reader notices is that Goodwin dives into the subject immediately and questions the reader “you ask me what is poverty?” in a rhetorical manner as if to describe the absurdity of the question itself. Whether or not the writer is the character portrayed in the essay or that she has adopted a persona is unknown since the author writer has not disclosed much about this work or herself. In any case, we know that the person writing this essay with a narrative style has seen and perhaps experienced poverty even from a disturbingly close proximity. In the first paragraph, Goodwin advises the readers to “listen without pity” and see everything as if from a distance but the eventual emotions that they feel are of empathy and pity, which is the inevitable result of Goodwin’s vivid description and definition of poverty and also the troubles that come with it.
In the second paragraph, Goodwin describes the ‘smell of poverty’ with detail. The imagery given by her is so vivid, like “this is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food….”, “the smell of rotting garbage” and so on that the reader almost, in some sense, smells them and empathizes with and many like her, immediately. What is worth noting is the repetition of the phrase “it is the smell of…” which puts stress on her condition and shows the agitation and hopelessness felt by the writer that now the poverty is not limited to her only but now her children will suffer it too. This knowledge is a greater kind of poverty because now she knows her children are now victims of it too but she is helpless in every way. She mentions in a later paragraph “I can already see them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty”. There isn’t a greater fear for a mother than knowing that her children are “forever and ever and ever” chained in the shackles of poverty.
Goodwin then further describes the problems that come with
First impressions:
One thing that the reader notices is that Goodwin dives into the subject immediately and questions the reader “you ask me what is poverty?” in a rhetorical manner as if to describe the absurdity of the question itself. Whether or not the writer is the character portrayed in the essay or that she has adopted a persona is unknown since the author writer has not disclosed much about this work or herself. In any case, we know that the person writing this essay with a narrative style has seen and perhaps experienced poverty even from a disturbingly close proximity. In the first paragraph, Goodwin advises the readers to “listen without pity” and see everything as if from a distance but the eventual emotions that they feel are of empathy and pity, which is the inevitable result of Goodwin’s vivid description and definition of poverty and also the troubles that come with it.
In the second paragraph, Goodwin describes the ‘smell of poverty’ with detail. The imagery given by her is so vivid, like “this is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food….”, “the smell of rotting garbage” and so on that the reader almost, in some sense, smells them and empathizes with and many like her, immediately. What is worth noting is the repetition of the phrase “it is the smell of…” which puts stress on her condition and shows the agitation and hopelessness felt by the writer that now the poverty is not limited to her only but now her children will suffer it too. This knowledge is a greater kind of poverty because now she knows her children are now victims of it too but she is helpless in every way. She mentions in a later paragraph “I can already see them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty”. There isn’t a greater fear for a mother than knowing that her children are “forever and ever and ever” chained in the shackles of poverty.
Goodwin then further describes the problems that come with