Things From Jurgis Imprisonment To Ona's Death example essay topic

Chapters 1-3 In these first few chapters, I was surprised at a couple of things. One of these things was about how little focus was on Ona and Jurgis at their own wedding reception. They were only talked about very briefly and not again until the next chapters. I would think if you are going to talk about a wedding, you would probably talk about the people getting married; , not the violinist in the wedding band, like Sinclair talked about Tamoszius. What also surprised me was how awful Sinclair made Chicago look to these poor immigrants moving to America. You always hear how great America was and how it was a "land of opportunity" for all these immigrants years ago.

Sinclair described in a flashback how Ona and Jurgis and some family members came to America from Lithuania and found it was quite depressing and dirty. The landscape was rundown and did not look too promising, but these people were still optimistic and grateful for everything they had. Even after Jurgis sees the hogs and cattle being slaughtered in the dirty factories, he is just grateful that these places employ so many people and hopes to be able to get a job there. Also their living conditions were quite bad. They lived in a four room apartment with about fifteen people.

I figured when they saw how awful it was there, they would give up all hope and maybe even want to move to another country. These chapters are beginning to describe how difficult life was for the poor people, especially immigrants in the early twentieth century in America. It shows the troubles in things from trying to become situated in a new place and lifestyle to even just trying to get married with what little money and possessions you have. They also describe how even though these people were in a different country, they still tried to keep traditions of the old country, such as the acziavimos at the wedding reception. It was difficult to keep these traditions because the young people wanted to change to their new atmosphere and new country's customs. In chapters 4-9, we learn how Jurgis surprisingly enjoys his work and is even shocked to see that his fellow workers do not feel the same as he does.

Even though he realizes how gross his task of killing the animals is, he still loves the fact he is getting paid to do it. It is amazing that money means so much to Jurgis that he does not even want to join the union because he had to pay to get in. I did not think he would ever change his mind because he was so head-strong, especially when it came to money, but he did when Marija] lost he job and he realizes he is not protected either. Because he likes his money so much, I was surprised that he did not want Antanas to get a fob just because he would have to pay a certain amount of his pay.

I figured he would want money anyway he could get it. Something else about these chapters is that they seem to be a little more boring to read, not the material in them but just how they are brought across. Instead of being told directly what the characters did, Sinclair chose to tell what they had done, even important things, like how Tamoszius and Marija get engaged. This especially should have been told in more detail because it is so interesting. I never even expected her to get married because she is so headstrong and set in her ways so it seemed strange that she would marry this little man who seemed to only love music.

Another thing in these chapters was; the death of Jurgis' father, Dede Antanas. Until the day he died, he was still worried about working to "earn his keep" in the family. I am surprised that even when confronted with death, money was still on everyone's mind. Jurgis does not even have time to mourn his father's death because he was worried about paying for the hearse, because they could not even afford a real funeral. The reason he died was because of the poor conditions where he worked. I found this part of the story to be a little bit humorous, even though I am sure this is not the effect Sinclair was trying to portray.

The way Sinclair describes how you can tell where someone works in the factory by which disease or injuries they have, from rheumatism, to cut off of lost fingers from acid and knives. Another funny thing was the way Jurgis describes the government after being told about and influenced by those who pay him to vote a certain was. He almost compares the government to his meat packing factory with all of it's corruption and describes it in this way: "The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office, which bought the most votes". (113) This is funny in that it shows how corrupt even the government was at that time. These chapters are now getting into more details about how dirty and depressing the meat packing industry was. Every part of it, even Antanas mopping the chemicals on the floor, was sad.

Sinclair is now showing his obvious theme of how awful this industry is by telling the sad story of Jurgis and his family. Chapters 10-15 were quite troubling to me. It seems as if everything that could go wrong did. When Ona has her baby, she can not afford to stay away from work so she has to go back to work a week after the birth of Antanas, which leaves her with various illnesses she will never get over.

Also, Jurgis is not making as much money as before because there are so many new workers in his factory. All the owners think about is making more money so they do not care about cutting the pay of their workers. The next thing is that Jurgis hurts his ankle, which puts him out of work for a few months. This was troubling because it seemed the family was finally, coming through but now without Jurgis, the others would have to work extra hard. Something surprising, though, is the way Jurgis acted after he got hurt. When Stanislovas, Ona's young step-brother, got his fingers frozen permanently hurting them, Jurgis got mad and beat him every morning because he did not want to go to work.

I never thought Jurgis would hurt anyone. He seemed too nice, especially around Ona and her family, to actually beat someone. When Jurgis gets better, he goes out looking for a job. His job at Brown's is no longer his because the factory refuses liability.

This shows how much things have changed since the early 1900's. Now, if you get hurt on the job, that have to take you back or pay you something or you can sue them. Back then, they did not treat workers as humans. All they were considered were something that helped to bring in money to the company. He finally got a job at the fertilizer plant, the lowest job possible. He was sick from the gross conditions and made all those he lived with sick, too.

I think it was sick that he had to put himself and his family through this just to get paid as little as he did. If we had to do this today to not even get all of the essentials of life, I think I would kill myself. Something else that made me sick was the way Sinclair described Ona's stepmother, Elzbieta's job with the sausage machine. It was so disgusting how he described the different things in sausage. I doubt I will ever eat it again.

Next in these chapters, I was disappointed that Jurgis took up drinking. I thought he would be stronger than that because he had Ona. She, however, put him "over the edge" when he finally found out about her and her boss Conner. Jurgis was basically beating information out of her about him, which again surprised me. I was not surprised, however, when he want to beat up Conner. He had always wanted to protect her and when he found out Conner had hurt her and threatened her with her and her family's jobs, he obviously, would try to protect her from being hurt again.

These chapters again are showing the depressing life of these poor people who are forced to work in these disgusting packing houses. To have to live this type of life seems almost unbearable. Their jobs influence everything in their lives, almost making them a living hell. Sinclair is showing that their lives are this hard and depressing not because they are not hard workers, but because there is almost no way possible to succeed in their time and place.

It would be a miracle even to be able to work at a job one even minutely likes or even get paid a half-way descent amount. Their life is just horrible in every way possible. Chapters 16-21 In these chapters, what interested me most was Jurgis seemed to think the same way I do. His views of how society treats criminals is similar to mine. When he finds that in jail, he is fed and sheltered, he is almost angry at society because it is helping these criminals when people like him can't even afford these luxuries. Also, I was surprised at how the judge sentenced him.

He barely listened to his side of the story, and when he listened to Conner, who is part of the "system", he granted him everything he wanted. Something else was how easily Jurgis took in all the information that Duane, a fellow prisoner, was telling him about how corrupt society actually was. He absorbed so easily the ideas of all the illegal actions that could be taken to defeat society. Jurgis seems to put these thoughts on hold, however, when he gets out of jail and discovers his fears have come true. He lost his house and when he find hi family, Ona is dying while giving birth to their second child.

Jurgis runs out to get a midwife he cannot afford, which I think shows how downhill their lives have gone in just a few years. They used to be able to afford a doctor, now they cannot afford a midwife. Hi wife's eventual death is also symbolic. It seemed as if everything Jurgis dreamed of about his American experience had been destroyed, first his house, then his love.

Now that Ona is gone, he goes to get drunk to escape his problems, as many other men of that time did. When he sobers up, he goes home and promises to look for a job. He finds one after a while and then an even better one is offered to him by a sympathetic woman who has met up with Jurgis's on, to work in the steel mill. He starts looking forward to and planning his future when one day he gets home and finds out his son has died in a puddle. This obviously was a shock, but did not make me feel all that bad for Jurgis or his son. Maybe that is because I never really felt connected to either character.

In these chapters I seemed to relate to Jurgis the best because his views on society really "touched home". He showed society as a corrupt part of life that never looked out for the good of all of the people, only those that "ran" the people. His misfortunes also showed how in that kind of society, if you start out low, it is almost impossible to succeed enough to rise above that level. This was shown through things from Jurgis' imprisonment, to Ona's death, and to his own son's death. Chapters 22-26 These chapters seemed to be a little more uplifting than the rest. Even though his family was gone, Jurgis seemed to find happiness, or at least peace, in the countryside where he ran away to.

After hopping on the train, he was finally free to do what he pleased and move without being restricted to a crowded city. He also could use his money for what he wanted, which was usually liquor and women. So it surprised me when he got so upset when he saw a mother and child because it seemed that he had got past what had happened in his past. He ended up moving back to the city where he got a job digging tunnels. This job showed how corrupt the times were because his employer lied to him to get him to dig these tunnels. They said they were for telephones instead of subways to ruin their union.

Of course, on the job, Jurgis gets hurt again and can no longer work. It saddened me to see that Jurgis had seemingly hit bottom and had to beg and even steal. Having stolen one hundred dollars, he tries to change it but the bartender only gives him change for one dollar so he attacks him and is put in jail again. This is unfair because he obviously can never rise out of his low position in life. While in jail, he meets Duane again and decides to join in his illegal way of life. Even though illegal, I think this is a good idea because it is the only way to get a fair chance at life.

Now, surprisingly, Jurgis was part of the "system" he always had cursed. He worked for Mike Scully who ran Packing town. Jurgis' corrupt job is stealing with Duane or buying votes for Scully. It seems that people of that time got money any way they could, not caring whether they hurt others or not. This shows how corrupt their world was.

Only the people contributing to the corruption would ever gain anything in life, unless something was done. The true herd workers never got rewarded and they often times got punished just because they weren't part of the "system". Chapters 27-31 In the first part of these chapters, what shocked me was how just one common man's speech changed Jurgis' views and life so dramatically. When he found Marija in a brothel and found out how bad her life was, he goes out one night to just get away and goes to a meeting where he hopes to find a place to stay for a few hours. While there, he is inspired by the speaker, which even surprises himself. This speaker discussed something that even I found interesting.

He said how all the working men had to gang up on the leaders of the system. If they did that, they would be stronger than anyone in the world. What surprised me most was how this was such a new idea to everyone. It never occurred to them that since there were so much more of their kind, they were stronger than any of the "leaders", so they were very interested in the ideas behind socialism, as I was too. As Dr. Schliemann was describing his idea of socialism at a meeting, I found myself almost agreeing with everything he said and wondering why the world really could not be that way. He described things from having no competition for classes, to not having to do all of the boring or gross labor of their times, and even to the scientific advancements that would aid everyone, and these things seemed almost too logical.

These speeches given across the country seemed to influence others in the same way. The statistics given show that in the next election, the socialist vote almost quadrupled, which shows how quickly the ideas were spreading. The ending to this story surprised me also. Throughout the book, Jurgis encountered one disaster after another, but then after one speech, his life was changed forever. Even his future looked promising. Of course this is a happy ending but it was not expected so it shocked me.

All in all, I would have to say I did not enjoy this book but Sinclair did get his task accomplished of using this novel as a propaganda for socialism because it even convinced me.