Analysis of Barbara Ehrenreich's “Serving in Florida” (Essay Sample)

📌Category: Articles
📌Words: 582
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 18 June 2022

Serving in Florida is an essay written by Barbara Ehrenreich on her experiences as a waitress. In order to achieve the goal of making the audience comprehend her stories, Ehrenreich personalizes her essay, builds up her credibility, and combines both to persuade the audience to become more attentive while reading the essay. Ehrenreich utilizes dysphemism, diction, ethos, and imagery to produce a personalized and informative essay about her experience in the restaurant industry. 

Ehrenreich initially gains the audience’s attention through her statement of “Picture a fat person’s hell…” (Ehrenreich 1). This display of dysphemism is present throughout the essay and its pervasiveness is an impetus for Ehrenreich to personalize her work. This personalization doesn’t reflect positively on her own character or personality, but it does lead her audience to believe that she is being authentic. It is through this authenticity that Ehrenreich is able to form her credibility with readers.

Throughout her essay, Ehrenreich shows her intellect by making sure every word she writes and the diction she uses contains the purpose of informing her readers on her experiences in the restaurant industry. While most of this essay is meant to grab the attention of the readers, it wouldn’t be wise to overlook the second goal of maintaining the attention of audience members who might know background information on the author by affirming what they may know. One example of this is the subtle phrase “… gastroarchitectural system” (Ehrenreich 2). At first glance it is easy to miss, but when you remember who Ehrenreich is— a PhD holder in the field of biology— then it becomes clear that this is a tool used for convincing a sector of the audience that likes Ehrenreich and knows her background, into continuing to focus their attention on actually comprehending the essay. 

The use of ethos is present in Ehrenreich’s essay as the driving force behind getting the audience to fully understand her perspective and in listening to Ehrenreich tell her experiences as a waitress. One of the most obvious examples is when Ehrenreich said “I have gone from craft work straight into the factory…” (Ehrenreich 2). This metaphor builds on Ehrenreich's credibility in a new way that is not based on authenticity, but rather on her professional experience. Ehrenreich is saying that she went from possessing a job that she could live with, into having to come to work every day doing something that she just doesn’t like. This builds on her credibility because it gives the audience an impression that Ehrenreich has a diverse background when it comes to her employment history and that she has an abundance of knowledge about work in general.

In her essay, Ehrenreich gently crafts her desired information to the audience through her delicately handled use of imagery. One example of imagery occurred when Ehrenreich said “The break room summarizes the whole situation: there is none, because there are no breaks at Jerry’s” (Ehrenreich 2). This statement characterizes the culture at Jerry’s by leading the reader into trying to visualize a break room and then visualize nothing. Through this style of imagery Ehrenreich formulates an important path towards informing the audience on Ehrenreich's experiences as a waitress.

Ehrenreich utilizes dysphemism, diction, ethos, and imagery to produce a personalized and informative essay about her experience in the restaurant industry. In her brilliant essay, Ehrenreich starts out with a crass dysphemism to grab the reader’s attention, personalizes her essay, and produces her credibility through said personalization. Next she locks in her core audience by intimately expressing her uncommonly known love for science. Then Ehrenreich allows her credibility to persuade the audience into paying more attention to her words and taking her experiences to heart. Lastly, imagery is used to add to the information the audience absorbs about Ehrenreich’s tenure as a worker in the restaurant industry.

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