Unit 3.4: What is Poverty? Complete Exercises 2024

This article has all the exercises for Unit 3.4 of Class 11’s English, What is Poverty?

Understanding the text

Answer the following questions.

a. What is poverty according to Parker?
→ According to Parker, poverty is about a lack of enough money for necessities, better foodstuffs, very little education, and little or no access to health care. It is like an acid that destroys pride, honor, health, and the future. Overall poverty means living without hope, better food, medical care, and proper education.

b. How is poverty difficult for Parker’s children? List some specific examples.
→ Parker’s three children suffer a lot due to poverty. They live their miserable lives due to the lack of proper foodstuffs, education, clothing, and care. Parker has presented the very bad condition of her children along with her. According to her, they eat oil-less cornbread as breakfast. They wear dirty clothes. They aren’t sent to a school. Parker has informed us about a day’s event when she left her children under the care of her mother during her job. When she returned, she found her youngest covered with flyspecks whose diaper hadn’t been changed since morning. Her next son was playing with the broken glasses. Her eldest son was playing on the edge of the lake. Her children would play in the dirt. In this way, poverty is difficult for Parker’s children.

c. How does Parker try to obtain help, and what problems does she encounter?
→ Parker tries to obtain help from different people but she was rejected. She asks her relative for a loan, but her relative wanted something in return. She also tried in different offices for jobs and asked for a loan too. She had to describe her pathetic condition to many people to get help. Finally, someone comes out and asks her if she needs help. That isn’t the person she needs to see. She goes to see another person. After telling him the whole story about her poverty she finds that this is the wrong office. Then, she must repeat the whole process. In this way, Parker has to encounter a lot of problems.

d. Why are people’s opinions and prejudices her greatest obstacles?
→ People’s opinions and prejudices are her greatest obstacles because these aspects prevent her from getting supportive hands for the sake of her family. She was dominated by other people due to her poor condition. Most people don’t realize the bitter experience of poverty. For them, the pain of poor people is nothing. They keep on giving their free advice as if being poor is a curse and it is easy to come out of poverty. When she asks for help, some want to take advantage of her helplessness. Such prejudices make her unable to get help.

e. How does Parker defend her inability to get help? How does she discount the usual solutions society has for poverty (e.g., welfare, education, and health clinics)?
→ Parker defends her inability to get help through her opinions and by expressing her experiences of poverty. She discounts the usual solutions society has for poverty by drawing the attention of people toward the pathetic state of poor people. She says that living without hope, medical care, and proper education is like an acid that destroys pride, honor, health, and the future. She has to move and spread her hands in many agencies in the name of welfare where she has to be ashamed and humiliated. She has to prove her poverty time and again and face rejection. In the name of education, school-launched programs are there but they are of no use. She has experienced her two children’s condition after sending them to school. Parker’s life is quiet away from health clinics’ facilities. To get medical help, she has to walk miles. If she asks for someone’s help, the helper expects negative things from her. Thus, Parker shows how shameful, humiliating and disgusting it is to be poor.

Reference to the Context

a. Explain the following: Poverty is looking into a black future.
→ This line “Poverty is looking into a black future” has been stated by the writer Jo Goodwin Parker in her essay. She has put forward this line for her readers to present her experience of poverty. She thinks that the poor can’t provide proper food and education to their children. Nor they can maintain cleanliness and sound health because they don’t have money. Conditions like such ultimately invite disease, helplessness, hunger, unemployment, crimes, etc. So, poverty leads people toward the black future. Poor people have to live a miserable life on a daily basis. They have no hope of any betterment. They keep on spending their lives in disparity looking into a black future. Poverty breaks expectations and dreams of the future.

b. What does Parker mean by “The poor are always silent”?
→ “The poor are always silent” means the helplessness of poor people who cannot spend money on healthcare and medicine. When the question of money arises, they are silent, because they can’t even dream of having expensive medical operations, eating in restaurants, wearing fashionable dresses, going to quality schools, etc. They have no words in response because they are completely helpless. Where money speaks, they are voiceless. They have a very pathetic situation.

c. What writing strategy does the author use at the beginning of most of the paragraphs? Do you notice a recurring pattern? What is it?
→ In this essay, the author uses her repetition strategy at the beginning of most of the paragraphs. She repeats the phrase “Poverty is”. The essay is well organized where she repeats the word – poverty many times. That means her main concern is poverty and she is showing her bitter feelings and frustrations about her miserable conditions. The whole essay sounds like a casual conversation. She is talking to an imaginary reader who does not understand what poverty is. She uses satire and humor in the middle.

d. How does Parker develop each paragraph? What details make each paragraph memorable?
→ Parker develops each paragraph starting with her repetition strategy. She begins most of her paragraphs with a repetition statement as “Poverty is”. She then provides her personal experiences about her topic sentences.

The images of poverty that she mentioned in each paragraph are memorable. She says poverty is a chisel that chips on honor are worn away. The really poor people have an inferiority complex due to the economic factor. Their honor is really scattered. Even if the man is wise and intellectual he can do nothing in front of the wealth. The details related to her personal painful experiences and the bitter reality of poverty make each paragraph memorable.

e. In the final paragraph, how does the author use questions to involve the reader in the issue of poverty?
→ In the final paragraph, the author uses questions in her informal style of direct conversation to involve the readers in the issue of poverty. In the final paragraph she uses the question “can you be silent too?” where she wants to describe her silence due to the poverty that she faced in her life. She asked us if the poor is silence and if should we be silenced too. Parker is capable of causing the reader to feel many emotions and forcing the reader to question her own stereotypes of poor Parker is capable of making the reader feel guilty for the possessions that she has. She wanted to make the attention of the reader to solve the problems of poor people. They must not think about themselves only she said not to be silent and help others for a better future. She asked the reader if his/her in that situation, can they be silent too. Poor people are always active to raise their voices. So, Parker wanted the reader to give their attention to the poor too.

Reference beyond the text

a. Define a social problem (homelessness, unemployment, racism) imitating Parker’s style.
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A Social Problem: Unemployment

Unemployment the word itself if stays longer would affect the cost of the economy. The entire individual who is not working in the referenced period falls under the category of unemployment. They might be anyone who is highly skilled or has no skills. When unemployment reaches above the expected rates it subtle the growth and leads to social issues. With no money, there is no education, food resources, and basic elements for the survivor. Whether someone is homeless or has no job, this all head place to social issues.

In conclusion, unemployment is the major problem that creates disturbance, stress and lowers down a growing economy. Personal and social concern has been associated with poverty, population, lack of technologies, health risks, and slow expansion of the business. All these issues arise when unemployment exponentially grow within countries. This certainly remarks about the serious problems of housing and hopeless life. Unemployment causes harm to the economy not in the sense of waste of resources but also by building pressure on the community.

b. Using adjectives to highlight the futility of the situation, write a short definition essay on Growing up in Poverty.
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Essay on Growing Up in Poverty

Poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living. Poverty means that the income level from employment is so low that basic human needs can’t be met. Poverty-stricken people and families might go without proper housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical attention. Each nation may have its own threshold that determines how many of its people are living in poverty.

Growing up in poverty is annoying and frustrating and never allows you to be happy. When one cannot manage the minimum requirements of life like food, education, and health, that life is a punishment. One’s creativity and natural talent can never come out. Rather such a situation humiliates him and he can never live a dignified human life. Disparity and inequality never let him be free and do something good in his life. Growing up in poverty is a frightening experience where one has to face various hardships and struggles. It provides him with a tiring and worrying experience where pains are always ready to welcome him.

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Unit 3.4: What is Poverty? Complete Exercises

Understanding the text

Answer the following questions.

Reference to the Context

Reference beyond the text

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