Read the excerpt from How the Other Half Lives and answer the question that follows.

Question

...The twenty-five cent lodging-house keeps up the pretense of a bedroom, though the head-high partition enclosing a space just large enough to hold a cot and a chair and allow the man room to pull off his clothes is the shallowest of all pretenses. The fifteen-cent bed stands boldly forth without screen in a room full of bunks with sheets as yellow and blankets as foul. At the ten-cent level the locker for the sleeper's clothes disappears. There is no longer need of it. The tramp limit is reached, and there is nothing to lock up save, on general principles, the lodger. Usually the ten- and seven-cent lodgings are different grades of the same abomination. Some sort of an apology for a bed, with mattress and blanket, represents the aristocratic purchase of the tramp who, by a lucky stroke of beggary, has exchanged the chance of an empty box or ash-barrel for shelter on the quality floor of one of these "hotels."...

In a paragraph, explain the difference between each level of accommodation in the tenement.

(4 points)

Answer 1

In the excerpt from "How the Other Half Lives," each level of accommodation in the teeming lodging-house reflects an increasingly deteriorated standard of living. The twenty-five cent lodging-house offers the semblance of privacy with a head-high partition that barely encloses a small space, providing minimal comfort with a cot and a chair. In contrast, the fifteen-cent beds lack any form of privacy, existing in a room filled with multiple bunks and filthy linens, indicating a significant degradation in personal dignity and hygiene. The ten-cent lodgings mark an even lower tier, where the absence of personal lockers reveals the notion that the lodger has nothing of value to secure; these accommodate the "tramp" level of society, offering only the barest apology for a bed, a decrepit mattress, and a grim blanket. Finally, the seven-cent lodgings represent the extreme end of this hierarchy, where conditions are similar to the ten-cent lodgings, but further emphasize the decline into hopelessness, with the accommodation primarily viewed as a refuge for those at the lowest rungs of society. Each tier not only reflects a decrease in cost but also a corresponding deterioration in living conditions and personal dignity.