In "Live Free and Starve" and "The Singer Solution to World Poverty", Chitra Divakaruni and Peter Singer both show a desire to try to help children living in poverty in third world countries. It may surprise you to hear that the authors' opinions on how this should be done are complete opposites. On one hand, Singer strongly believes that people living in wealthy countries need to be giving more to these children, while on the other, Divakaruni believes that we need to stop trying to free these children from the bonds that they are in.
Even though I do not fully agree with either one of these arguments, there are certain aspects of each that I can reason with and find to be true to what I believe. As I mentioned before, in Divakaruni's article, she argues her idea that bills and other efforts to free children from labor in third world countries are actually hurting these children. She says, "If the children themselves were asked whether they would rather work under such harsh conditions or enjoy a leisure that comes without the benefit of food or clothing or shelter, I wonder what their response will be." I do not completely agree with this, since I think we need to do as much as we can to help these children, but I see where she is coming from. Divakaruni attempts to get inside the minds of these children and to imagine what they feel, which I think is rational and honorable. Peter Singer uses a completely different approach. His main strategy in his article is to make the readers feel guilty about not donating to organizations that help children living in poverty. "If we don't [donate], then we should at least know that we are failing to live a morally decent life..," says Singer in his article. Although I agree with him in the fact that people who have more that what they need should be giving more than they do to these organizations, I do not think the approach that he takes is very affective. To me, Singer comes off as rude and belittling, trying to make it sound like it is our personal fault that many of these children die each day.
Being an individual who comes from a strong Christian family and has grown up with the mindset that we are responsible for helping those in need, I most definitely had a strong bias when reading these articles. Obviously, I would agree with almost anything that has intentions of giving to the poor and needy because I feel that God is calling us to do so. After reading the two contrasting articles, I was surprised to find that I was agreeing more with Divakaruni's piece that urged readers not to try to help these children than Singer's, who argued that people need to give more and try to help them. I mainly believe that the reason for this is the approach that the two authors used in persuading the readers to agree with their point. I was very strongly persuaded by the story Divakaruni tells about the boy, Nimai, who worked in her house when she was a little girl. By having the personal experience of knowing what could happen to a child who is released from labor and no longer has food, water, or clothing, she connected with me, and I am sure many other readers, on a deeper level. As for Singer, as I have mentioned the whole way through this blog post, I believe that his use of guilt and harsh criticisms to sway the readers would not work for many people. I have many similar beliefs that Singer has and I can tell that he has a heart for these children, but I was too busy reacting to how blunt he was being to be persuaded by his argument.
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