Compare/Contrast Essay

In the essays A Web of Brands and Live Free and Starve by Naomi Klein and Chitra Divakaruni, both authors express the different aspects and their opinions of globalization. Naomi Klein focuses on the effects of globalization. In A Web of Brands, Klein looks at how the changes of the garment industry in Toronto connect to the factories of Jakarta, Indonesia. Chitra Divakaruni argues that the United States attempts to stop the practices of indentures, would have terrible consequences even though the efforts are well intended.

Naomi Klein begins her essay by describing the look of the old garment factories in Toronto and how, "no one has come up with a way to make a profit out of taking a wrecking ball to these boxes of brick, and in this little eight-or nine-block radius, the modern city has been layered hap-hazardly on top of the old." (Klein 440) Klein continues by explaining that many businesses have already closed down and been boarded up. Klein also compares how in the twenties and thirties, Polish and Russian immigrants were found in delis arguing about the leadership of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Now, Portuguese men are seen pushing coat and dress racks down the street. Naomi Klein has realized the transformation of the Industrial Toronto. In the fourth paragraph, Klein talks about Spadina Avenue and the "layers of decades" spent on this street. Klein felt that the City Hall should not have put up art to celebrate the history of Spadina Avenue. She explains how at first, steel figures were placed on the top of lampposts of women at work at sewing machines and workers on strike holding up signs with slogans posted on them. Then, an extremely large thimble was placed on the corner of Klein's street. "Thank goodness Emma Goldman, the famed anarchist and labor organizer who lived on this street in the late nineteen thirties, wasn't around to witness the transformation of the garment workers' struggle into sweatshop kitsch." (Klein 441) Naomi Klein's purpose in this essay is to express the changes over time with globalization and the horrible realities that come along with it. The second section of this essay talks about globalization in Jakarta, Indonesia. Klein states that the seamstresses in those factories were very young. "...some of them as young as fifteen; only a few were over twenty-one." (Klein 442) The ninth paragraph describes how the Kaho workers went on strike because they work terribly long hours and do not get paid at the legal rate. In American money, they are being paid two dollars a day. Management then concluded that overtime would no longer be an obligation, but the pay would still be illegally low. Klein then met a seventeen year old girl who told her that she made computers but did not know how to operate one. This clearly shows that these adults and children are being mistreated. Naomi Klein wants to inform her readers of the connections between the globalization in different parts of the world.

Chitra Divakaruni focuses more on the people who endure the harsh working environments and despicable pay. Divakaruni explains in the first paragraph about how the House passed a bill in 1998 called Sanders International Child Labor Import Ban. This bill requires that the United States Customs Service places a detention order on certain goods that are suspected of being made by forced child servants, also called indentures. Chitra Divakaruni explains that these children are working in horribly ventilated areas that have poor lighting. These children's lungs and eyes are being damaged due to these unfortunate conditions. In paragraph four,