In Barbara Ehrenreich's investigative memoir, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Ehrenreich herself attempts to determine whether Minimum wage is actually a livable wage when taking low-paying work in three different locations across America. Unsurprisingly, his answer is no. Satirizing the often corrupt employers she works for and developing humility through self-deprecation, Ehrenreich recounts her experiences with a sense of lightness, largely free from romanticized or pitiful depictions of the poor. However, she does not allow humor to overshadow the horror of poverty, honestly recounting her feelings of fear, misery and futility. This helps create a nuanced and humane portrayal of the poor, which lends weight to his argument for socio-economic reform. Ehrenreich compounds this by echoing Marxist language and liberal sentiment, rallying liberal support for change while drawing connections between actual poor experiences and the political agenda. By making his bias clear from the start and using Marxist language to turn his narrative into an argument, Ehrenreich narrows his audience to those who already support an increase in the minimum wage as policy. This allows Ehrenreich's narrative to form the mainstay of his argument, adding urgency to his agenda by humanizing the poor and revealing the harsh economic realities of poverty. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Ehrenreich steps into his project and begins his novel with a clear bias: that a minimum wage is not a living wage. This preconceived thesis restricts his audience to the liberal upper class, allowing him to refine his argumentation style so that it is more effective. Although Ehrenreich approaches her project with a certain scientific curiosity, she does so with a clearly skeptical tone, asking, "How can we live on the wages available to the unskilled?" »(1). Furthermore, although she attempts to moderate disbelief by acknowledging the possibility of some "hidden economies" of the poor, she also describes "the despair of being a wage slave" before even beginning her project (5). She also acknowledges his predilection for “Marxist diatribes,” which likely alienate conservative readers but garner support from educated liberals (9). In doing so, Ehrenreich clarifies his own liberal position, without clearly addressing more conservative counterarguments, thus limiting his target audience to liberals. Speaking to an audience that already supports her agenda, Ehrenreich's goal then is to add a sense of humanity to her political cause, which she accomplishes by using metonymy, synecdoche, and bodily metaphors to demonstrate how poverty degrades one's upper-middle-class individuality. The first thing Ehrenreich describes about his jump into the “parallel universe” of poverty is self-reduction; as a waitress, she is not Barbara the person, but rather “baby,” “sweetheart,” “blonde,” or, most often, “girl”” (13). This example of metonymy and synecdoche shows how service work reduces people to parts and, while this is actually dehumanizing, the fact that this happens to Ehrenreich (whose humanity, as a member of the upper class , seems implicit) forces his superior liberal class readers to identify their own humanity with that of the poor. By recognizing these stereotypes while telling..