“What is poverty”, by Jo Goodwin Parker; circulates the theme of poverty and what a person undergoes in poverty. Using details she engages her audience directly with this unreal idea of poverty, making it very evident and detailed. Parker wants her audience to understand poverty in order to move a certain feeling within them.
The audiences of Parkers essay are the social elite and middle class people in a certain country. Parker seems to have an understanding of her audiences stereotyped way of thinking, Parker has put words in her audience’s mouth and retorted to them. For example, she writes, “You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house,” ” Anybody can be clean.” Her aim is to fight these stereotyped thoughts about poverty. Parker explains the humiliation people receive when they ask for money, saying, “Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only …show more content…
She places the audience in an uncomfortable and awkward mood and state of mind. As a reader, you feel addressed, because she uses domineering verbs, such as, “put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.” Her usage of the pronoun ‘you’ is bifold. Parker addresses her audience in the 1st person in order for the reader to commiserate and show the reader that she is writing unexperienced.
Parker’s message is very clear. She wants to create rage in her audience about poverty so they will help her. She says she does not want the reader’s pity. “I cannot use your pity,” she says. She asks the reader to listen with an open-mind and to try to understand. She wants to make the reader more conscious of her misery and the misery of others around her. In the final lines she says, “Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me.” After showing us an image of poverty throughout the essay she closes with this very clear demand to
The audiences of Parkers essay are the social elite and middle class people in a certain country. Parker seems to have an understanding of her audiences stereotyped way of thinking, Parker has put words in her audience’s mouth and retorted to them. For example, she writes, “You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house,” ” Anybody can be clean.” Her aim is to fight these stereotyped thoughts about poverty. Parker explains the humiliation people receive when they ask for money, saying, “Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only …show more content…
She places the audience in an uncomfortable and awkward mood and state of mind. As a reader, you feel addressed, because she uses domineering verbs, such as, “put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.” Her usage of the pronoun ‘you’ is bifold. Parker addresses her audience in the 1st person in order for the reader to commiserate and show the reader that she is writing unexperienced.
Parker’s message is very clear. She wants to create rage in her audience about poverty so they will help her. She says she does not want the reader’s pity. “I cannot use your pity,” she says. She asks the reader to listen with an open-mind and to try to understand. She wants to make the reader more conscious of her misery and the misery of others around her. In the final lines she says, “Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me.” After showing us an image of poverty throughout the essay she closes with this very clear demand to