Blog Post #5
Kristof begins his essay "Where Sweatshops Are A Dream" by painting a picture of a place that he describes as a “Dante-like vision of hell”, where people dream of working in sweatshops instead of rummaging through piles of hot smoldering garbage for anything that might fetch a penny. The problem he identifies is, many countries want to wage war on sweatshops, however in some of the poorest areas of the world, working in a sweatshop is a dream job. Kristof assumes his readers are blind to the fact that places like this exist, or either don’t want to admit it. His purpose in this essay is to bring awareness that in some poverty-stricken countries sweatshops are a means to a better life. In order to accomplish this purpose, he appeals mainly to the emotions of the reader, describing children digging through piles of smoking trash to find plastic to sell for five cents a pound. In his essay, Kristof addresses the main argument against his thesis, the idea that sweatshop