Barbara Ehrenreich's memoir, Nickel and Dimed, commemorates her experiences as an "unskilled" worker trying to survive on low wages of its temporary lower class. While working in various jobs at different geological sites across the United States, she describes her own economic, physical, mental, logistical, and social challenges as well as those of her colleagues. She uses these experiences not only to demonstrate the difficulty of living on minimum wage, but also to criticize corporations and simultaneously advocate for workers' individuality and solidarity. In constructing this argument, she includes descriptions of several encounters with Christians, referring specifically and frequently to Jesus, drawing implicit comparisons between religion and business, mixing capitalist and religious diction. She clearly expresses her contempt for what she perceives as Christian hypocrisy through her sarcasm and ironic religious language, and successfully tackles the romanticization of poverty perpetuated by Christian notions of sacrifice and suffering. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The religious aspect of Ehrenreich's argument emerges subtly as she establishes Christians' distrust of the working class and similar distrust of corporations. She mocks her own “bourgeois solipsism” when “the gross improvidence” of the housing situation of many of her colleagues “struck” her (26). The ambiguity of the word improvidence gives this statement two distinctly possible and almost opposite meanings; improvidence, in the sense of waste or thrift, implies that her colleagues' fate is their own fault, an idea she directly refutes when she notes a "host of special costs" prohibitive to decisions the most economical for the poor. Alternatively, the word must imply a lack of divine guidance, and so Ehrenreich implicitly argues that God does not guide the poor, an argument which can be extended to a metaphor for modern Christians, who, according to Ehrenreich, have abandoned the lower class. Of her time as a waitress in Florida, she says the worst customers are "visible Christians," noting that "people who wear crosses or say 'WWJD?' the buttons look at [the workers] with disapproval, no matter what they do” (36). In making this generalization, she characterizes Christians (at least those she perceives as moralizing) as universally distrustful of the working class. With some Christians' distrust of the lower class established, Ehrenreich further criticizes modern Christianity and religion more generally, directly comparing it to corporations controlling workers. These references are almost always accompanied by capitalist language, associating and confusing religious morality with capitalist benefits. She notes the Mexican-American man who summarizes "our debt" to Jesus and describes "the affairs of modern Christianity" (68-69), transforming the religious institution of Christianity into a corporate institution, which places monetary gains above all. above the individuals who do it. give him the power necessary for his own existence. Similarly, non-corporeal “theoretical entities,” corporations, downplay the value of their employees as people and prioritize corporate profit over individual well-being (17). At Wal-Mart associate orientation meeting, employees are dissuadedto commit “time theft,” and the “indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers” create a debilitating sense of shame that perpetuates the cycle of cheap labor (115). The parallels that Ehrenreich draws between religious institutions and corporate institutions with regard to the attitudes and treatment of the poor working class provide a solid basis for his eventual Marxist rallying cry of workers, despite his merely temporary membership in the class worker.their class. If Christianity in its correctness is comparable to the corporations that Ehrenreich believes oppress their workers, then its comparison presents itself and, more broadly, the entire, suffering working class as Jesus Christ. She describes two distinct versions of Jesus that she believes exist: the living Christ, "the living man, the wine-drinking wanderer and early socialist," and "the crucified Christ" (68). This dichotomy of Christ presents a metaphor for both individual workers and the working class as perceived by corporations and, as Ehrenreich argues, by a certain sect of Christianity. Each worker, like the living Christ, is an individual “who is never mentioned and about whom he never has anything to say” (68); on the contrary, the crucified Christ is the only symbol worshipped, and his crucifixion is the very source of “our debt” to him (68). It is “the business of modern Christianity to crucify him again and again,” just as she claims it is the business of corporations to metaphorically crucify workers – to subject them to physically demanding, low-wage work and long hours. Likewise, modern Christianity's praise of Christ "as a corpse" and the hypocrisy and sanctity of His righteousness are akin to corporate rhetoric aimed at deceiving potential employees into believing that the company has “respect for the individual”, when in reality they are being treated. as nothing more than service drones (144). Ehrenreich's ultimate goal in supporting the Christ motif and comparisons between modern Christianity and corporate manipulation is ironic; it attempts to demolish traditionally Christian romantic notions of poverty that are increasingly prevalent in the United States. She implies that she is an atheist herself when she considers a revival in a church tent to be "the perfect entertainment for a lone atheist", thereby distancing herself from any religious moral implications. Once his atheism is established, the irony of his words regarding religion becomes clear. Ironically, she claims that she “doesn’t work for a housekeeping service; on the contrary, [she] joined a mystical order. . . grateful. . . for [the] chance to earn grace through submission and work” (62). The sarcasm and humor with which she skewers the idea of ​​suffering as a path to a kind of religious – and therefore capitalist – improvement (through her previously established mixed diction of religion and capitalism) is made more effective by the sincerity of “The rich [who] pay to spend their weekends. . . doing various menial tasks” (62). Likewise, she mixes up her legitimate assessment that “Jesus. . . more or less [was] favored by an inscrutable God” for the sole purpose of making him suffer with the more sarcastic application that she would consider a mortally wounded colleague to be equally favored. Ultimately, she effectively takes advantage of her established Christ motif and employs it as a means of exposing the hypocrisies of Christianity and corporate America by mixing sarcasm with legitimate Christian and corporate notions. By placing the two close together, it forces the examination of the.