How Can We Help The Homeless And Should We?: Searching For A Solution :: essays research papers

How Can We Help the Homeless and Should We?: Searching 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 "Virginia's 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 Awalt's "Brother Don't Spare a Dime" was the one essay that went against the idea of helping the homeless because the author thinks it's 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 "Virginia's Trap" where the young woman is in need of just a