Live Free and Starve vs The Singer Solution to World Poverty

In my Academy English 2 class, I was assigned to read two passages dealing with the subject of poverty: Live Free and Starve by Chitra Divakaruni and The Singer Solution to World Poverty by Peter Singer.



Compare/Contrast:

Live Free and Starve focused more on the aspect of need-based poverty abuse while The Singer Solution to World Poverty contained tales where people who wanted more were willing to take advantage of others with less.

Divakaruni highlights an instance where kids have been sold to factory owners by their parents, but don't pay off there indentures because they wouldn't be able to survive on their own in the outside world. So, because they aren't meeting their Physiological needs (Maslow's Hierarchy, also mentioned), they can't worry about what is right and wrong. Their number one priority is having food to eat and water to drink. Everything else hardly even matters.

On the other hand, Singer examines the other side of poverty abuse. This passage is more about ordinary (to some extent) people taking advantage of those in poverty for their own personal benefit. Whether it was upgrading or their TV or protecting their investment in an automobile, Singer is able to highlight the blemish in human sympathy. Believe it or not, folks, there are people in this world without a conscience that will kill others just for personal benefit. It's cruel, it's mean, but it's a part of our world.



Opinion: Although Divakaruni makes some interesting points, Singer's points on poverty abuse have the greater potential to be life threatening and are not decided upon by those in poverty, but by those slightly better off. That child in the train tracks is at the mercy of the Bugatti car owner. However, in the end, the car owner protects his car before a human being, an example of an unhuman lack of sacrifice. This was able to resonate stronger with me than Divakaruni's passage did.



Reader Bias: I definitely felt a bias about the whole aspect of killing/destroying/harming others to better yourself. From my point of view, never in any circumstance is that okay unless your life is on the same line as the other person. If it gets to that point, you gotta(intentional) do what you gotta do.

In the end, I feel my predisposed reader bias made it easier for me to connect with Singer's passage better because of it's complete inhumanity and contrast with my character and beliefs.