How Can We Help the Homeless and Should We Searc Essay Example For Students

How Can We Help the Homeless and Should We?: Searc Essay hing for a Solution Just a few months ago I was with my friends Mike and Kim and we had been walking around having a great time in the city. We then exited a store and Kim said something under her breath like, Oh, no, when I looked in the same direction to find a middle aged man with a drunken stare to him. She knew this man as the town drunk and he had been homeless for years. He asked us for the time and we replied, but he didnt just stop with that and followed us across the street talking up a storm. He was telling his whole life story in the fifteen minutes we stood there: he talked about how he grew up living poor with his family and how he wanted to be educated and go through college to get a good job so he could live well. But he said his parents just didnt have the money and it was impossible. I felt threatened as did Mike and Kim from the drunken gestures of this man and thought to myself, if this man wanted to make something of his life, I mean if he really wanted to, he would try harder and somehow do wh at he wanted. We tried to leave as soon as possible. But then I began reading these essays about the homeless and it started to change my mind. The essay Virginias Trap by Peter Marin especially effected me because of the way it portrays the young woman that has nothing going for her and almost everything against her. I though about this and decided I had misunderstood the whole plight of this population and thought there must be a better way to help these unfortunate people. How should we help the homeless and should we try even though they may not help themselves? I figure that is the most important question that needs to be answered if anything is to be done. Of the essays I analyzed Awalts Brother Dont Spare a Dime was the one essay that went against the idea of helping the homeless because the author thinks its their own fault for being the way they are. The other two essays are easier on the homeless and want to lend a helping hand. In Address Unknown: Homeless in Contemporary America James Wright thinks that helping the homeless by giving them more benefits that they will be more prosperous. Peter Marin has the same idea in Virginias Trap where the young woman is in need of just a little bit more money to stay the way she is in a home but doesnt receive enough. While Awalts narrow view of homeless people gives him the idea that all should not be helped in anyway, Wright and Marin go towards the idea of helping the people because they have already had a rough life and do in fact need this help to go anywhere in life. Awalts statement that homeless people are a waste of time is a very general statement in the least. Throughout his essay he only mentioned working with one homeless person trying to help him through a detoxification program. This person failed the procedure and left to go back to the streets and drink again. (Awalt 239) Just because this one person didnt have the endurance to undergo such an operation doesnt mean others wouldnt. What we need to have is a more hands on program with these homeless people to give them the attention that they need so that a majority of the people will not end up like this but eventually in their own homes. The opposite view is shared by Wright and Marin in their more lengthy and detailed essays. Pearl Harbor Bombing Essay Wright starts out saying that not all homeless are the same and should not all be treated the same. He states there are different classes of homeless people and there are the worthy and unworthy homeless, meaning that only some deserve to remain this way because they dont try to live otherwise. These small amount of people, about five percent, dont deserve the time and money spent on trying to get them off the streets but the only way to find out if they dont is to try at least once with them. If it doesnt work out thats a small amount of effort .