Humanities Homework Help

Provide an analysis of the nonfiction essay “What is Poverty” by Jo Goodwin Parker. This is not a summary; make sure that you offer an interpretation of the essay and that you “read between the lines” in order to address each aspect of analysis:

• Audience
• Purpose
• Content
• Mood
• Style
• Structure

In addition to your main response, you must also post substantive responses to at least two of your classmates’ posts in this thread. Your response should include elements such as follow up questions, further exploration of topics from the initial post, or requests for further clarification or explanation on some points made by the classmates.

After reading this essay, what is your first impression? How did it make you feel? To whom is Parker writing and why? How does her style and structure enhance meaning?

Please be sure to respond substantively to two peers. Your participation is not only a part of your grades, but also a vital part of your learning in this course.

Tips for Creating Substantive Participation

• Explain your response and add examples for support.
• Relate your personal or professional experiences to the topic at hand.
• Ask additional questions of your peers.
• Make connections between various topics we have discussed.
• Add ways you can apply the lessons from the class in your professional and educational life.

Comment 1

In the essay, “What is Poverty?” by Jo Goodwin Parker, the author provides descriptive details about what life is like living in poverty. After reading the first two lines of this essay, I instantly felt sympathetic for her, and as I continued reading and learned about her three children, that sympathy and pity grew even stronger. Throughout the essay, I picked up an overwhelming mood, filled with stress and exhaust as she describes the life she is living with her three kids. Parker shows a very descriptive style in her writing as she uses details such as “smell of urine, sour milk…long-cooked onions,” and “insects in your food, in your nose, in your eyes.” She uses details such as the way she and things around her smell and look in order to draw a picture in our minds and help us visualize everything she is describing. This essay is targeted to the general public, specifically to people who have enough money to live a comfortable life, in order to spread awareness about what it’s like to live in poverty, with barely any money to survive. The main goal of raising awareness is to provide help for those who are so unfortunate to be living in poverty. There are people all around the world, people we see everyday who live a life like she does. With Parker’s goal to spread awareness, we can provide even a little bit of help to those living in such unfortunate conditions.

Comment 2

In the essay “What is Poverty” by Jo Goodwin Parker, the author tries to bring you into the world of poverty with her words in order to ignite an anger within the reader to help fight for change. She paints a very clear picture as to what poverty is like by using extremely descriptive and specific examples of things that play on your senses. “This is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food…” the specificity of this description of vile smells we all hate, helps create the uncomfortable atmosphere the author is trying to portray. She also mentions the conditions her children have to live with, most likely because people generally are more sympathetic to children. Although the entire living situation for everyone involved is bad, Parker wants the readers to know how much worse it is for her children so they will be more likely to want to help. Parker also mentions the word poverty over and over again throughout the entire essay. This creates a feeling of urgency by having poverty thrown in your face so that it becomes an issue that needs to be addressed at the moment. All of these techniques help her reach the main goal of trying to ignite a passion in the readers so that they will want to help, not just Parker, but the problem of poverty in a greater sense.