"OUT OF THIS FURNACE" (THOMAS BELL) & "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES" (JACOB RIIS).   Term Paper ID:26430 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Compares depictions of Jewish immigrants & Slovaks, with brief consideration of Lithuanians in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."... More...

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Paper Abstract: Compares depictions of Jewish immigrants & Slovaks, with brief consideration of Lithuanians in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Paper Introduction: Thomas Bell, in his novel Out of This Furnace, deals with three generations of Slovaks and their experience in the United States, and Jacob A. Riis, in his photojournalistic How the Other Half Lives, covers the experiences of immigrants of a number of different nationalities and ethnicities at the turn of the century. This study will focus on the experiences of Jewish immigrants as depicted in Riis, comparing those to the experiences of the Slovaks in Bell's novel. Despite some important differences among the experiences of the Jews and the Slovaks, and the specific years examined, the studies are far more alike than different in their overall portraits of the suffering and exploitation of those immigrant groups in the era in which the industrial revolution exploded. The study will also briefly consider Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, in which Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. . In all three works, immigrants enter the country dreaming theAmerican Dream, and willing to work as hard to attain it, only to find thatthe odds are stacked high against them. have this in common: they carry their slums with them wherever they go, if allowed to do it (Riis 22). In "Jewtown," Riis focuses on this immigrant group. Nevertheless, ironically, for a book meant to highlight injusticeand dehumanization, Riis's effort could in many parts be used by exploitersof immigrants to show that they deserve what they get, or little better. . Inthe story of the broken dreams of Jurgis Rudkis and his fellow Lithuanianimmigrants, unions are meant to be institutions which give false hope tothe workers. He also notes, however, that "they are the worst paid class anywhere"(86), which explains in part the thriftiness he assesses so harshly. Bell's point is that the immigrant worker hasno protection from his boss, no union fighting for him, a situation whichwill change in the course of the book as each succeeding generationrealizes that change will come only through organization and unifiedstruggle against the owners. Riis bemoans that the Jews resist learning English (1 6), butat the same time this reliance on their traditional language serves as aglue which holds their community together and protects it fromassimilation. . The coal companies have spent thousands and thousands of dollars educating them with tear gas and machine guns. . Each group uses differentstrategies to try to survive and succeed. The section entitled"The Sweaters of Jewtown" stresses again the hard-work of the Jews, theireconomical uses of materials, their hard-headedness in all money-orientedenterprises. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1976.Riis, Jacob A. The story of Mike Dobrejcak in Bell demonstrates the growingawareness of the Slovaks that they would remain in poverty, no matter howhard or long they worked, as long as they were weak individuals facing thetremendous powers of the owners. The study will also briefly consider Upton Sinclair'snovel The Jungle, in which Sinclair examines the living and workingconditions of Lithuanian immigrants in the meatpacking industry of Chicagoat the turn of the century. The Jews in Riis's depiction are ardently religious, true to theircenturies-old social, educational and cultural traditions, which are mostoften based in that religion. The women are forced to work at an inhuman pace, lose moneyif they cannot, and then are fired if they complain (Sinclair 1 6). The Jews in Riis, on the other hand, work at home with children andmen, a situation Riis uses to emphasize the tendency of the Jews to remainin-doors relative to other immigrant groups. Riis, in his photojournalistic How the Other Half Lives, covers theexperiences of immigrants of a number ofdifferent nationalities and ethnicities at the turn of the century. Whatever strength the Jews had in Riis, it came from the cohesion oftheir culture, their work ethic, and their determination to compete andsucceed, bolstered by their religion and historical struggle againstoppression. However, Riis's portrayal ofJews, and of all immigrant groups, is less biased than brutally honest andunvarnished, keeping in mind the era in which they lived and he wrote, andthe fact that he recognized that the immigrants' best traits were distortedand their worst traits exaggerated by the hideous conditions in which theylived, struggled to survive, and died. It is at once its strength and its fatal weakness, its cardinal virtue and its foul disgrace. Mikerealizes, "Nobody can help us but ourselves, and if anything is to be done,we will have to do it ourselves" (Bell 194). Otherwise, Riis's accountsuggests that gender is insignificant among the Jews in terms of work. The portrait of the Slovak family in Bell's novel begins with thesame emphasis on money--the Slovaks are poverty-stricken as are Riis'sJews, both groups fleeing lives of poverty, with the added dimension ofreligious/racial oppression suffered by the Jews. The first striking element of Riis's portrayal of Jewish immigrantsis what could easily be read as the author's bias against Jews, withreferences to "their unmistakable physiognomy" and other signs which"betray their race," the "queer skull-caps" and "outlandish" clothing, and"the old women" who are "hags" (Riis 85). Differing fromBell, Sinclair believes that unions cannot change the basic evils of thesystem, which is capitalism. Mary, for example, takes in boarders while herhusband works, and cares for a "small boy for some American family" (Bell113). As Steve says, You ain't got a bunch of Hunky greenhorns back in the hills any more. Focusing on one brief moment in time, Riis is unable to showthe long-term changes depicted in Bell. Upton Sinclair in The Jungle focuses on the health and safety horrorsof the meatpacking industry in Chicago in the first years of the twentiethcentury. Money is their God (Riis 86). The immigrants he depicts in wordsand photographs seem stuck in a hell on earth, whereas in the fictionalworks of Bell and Sinclair, the immigrants are able to improve their livesthrough political action and union organization. Next time a union man walks in here you listen to him (Bell 355). However, the odds are stacked against Mike, not only because of theowners' power and spies, but because of the racism of other workers, whosee him as a troublemaker and a "Hunky." Mike's son Dobie, on the otherhand, takes the heritage of struggle from his father and carries itforward. He obviously knows that members of every group have beendehumanized by the brutal conditions of tenement life and must do whateverthey can to compete with members of their own group and other groups tosurvive. In thiscritical portrait of capitalism and its exploitation of the immigrants andother workers, the corrupt unions are in fact shown to be tools of thecapitalist bosses, used as another means to control and mislead them. Riis likens the Jews and the Italians for their industriousness andtheir determination to not only survive but to rise above other groups: Hardly less aggressive than the Italian, the Russian and the Polish Jew, having overrun [one] district . Out of This Furnace. New York: Signet, 199 .----------------------- 9 The Jungle. They live in utterly dreadful circumstances and are exploitedlike animals. He concentrates, like Bell, on the impact of the labor unions andProgressive reform on the immigrant workers in Chicago's packinghouses,considering the political climate, social relations and labor conditionsfrom the perspective of immigrants and their employers. . New York: Dover, 1971.Sinclair, Upton. Unlike Mike's generation, Dobie and his fellows do not fear theloss of job or insecurity if that is what it will take to win some powerfor their union against the owners. They've been educated, I says. However, Kracha quickly becomes a part of the Slovak community, andhis work in the steel mill and the railroad gives him enough economic powerto invest in land, but only by working in horrible, dangerous (Bell 54) andhideous conditions, as much as 84-96 hours a week (Bell 82). The Jews are able to climbup the ladder of competition and struggle with the Italians for the topspot, if there is a "top spot" in such widespread poverty and misery, whilethe Slovaks are lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Works CitedBell, Thomas. Nevertheless,his economic gain was unstable and uncertain, and he soon lost it all andwas imprisoned on top of it. . Obviously, their lack of skills in English is not so greatthat it prevents them from relative success in the pursuit of money, whichis the heart of Riis's portrait of Jewish immigrants. The political involvement of the Slovaksis depicted in this section, underscored by the education of Mike whichteaches him to believe in political change as Kracha never had. How the Other Half Lives. The Jewish immigrantsdescribed by Riis are already established in their lives as a community,whereas Kracha in Bell is alone and frightened and uncertain of what he isgoing to do or what is going to happen to him. He clearly means to show above allelse how they are exploited and how they suffer in the tenement environmentof New York. Because his non-fictional study focuses on a relatively fixed period,Riis's work is the most discouraging. . emphasizing theirwork ethic and their determination to save money: Thrift is the watchword of Jewtown. . . He emphasizes their uncleanliness (91), theirdiseases (88), and their intelligence with numbers (91), again stressingthe connection between this talent and money-making. Dobie's generation also benefitted fromgovernment support which the first two generations never had. to the point of suffocation, is filling the tenements [of a second district] and disputing with the Italian every foot of available space in the back alleys of Mulberry Street. Thomas Bell, in his novel Out of This Furnace, deals with threegenerations of Slovaks and their experience in the United States, and JacobA. With respect towomen, Riis simply does not provide much information to differentiatebetween the experiences of males and females. Sinclair's novel is meant to entirely rejectthe capitalist system and to bring in its place a socialist system. In Riis's book, this change is not shownbecause Riis focuses on one brief period in the immigrants' experience,rather than several decades as is the case in Bell's novel. Writing of the "young people in Jewtown"who are "inordinately fond of dancing,' he notes that "They are generallykept by some man who works in the daytime at tailoring, cigarmaking, orsomething else." As for the young people, Riis writes that "even to theirfun they carry their business preferences" (Riis 9 ), and he goes on tonote their efforts to enter dancing establishments without paying. Riis emphasizes the economic aspect of almost every activityinvolving the Jewish community. The two races . This education process took three generations, but by the end ofBell's book the Slovak workers have a security and strength Kracha'sgeneration never dreamed of. In Bell, women's roles are more clearly defined than in Riis, largelybecause the steelworking world involves men, which leaves women to do workat home or elsewhere. The only dividing line seemsto be between those old enough to work and those not, the latter includingonly the youngest children, boys and girls. . Become an overmastering passion with these people who come over here in droves from Eastern Europe to escape persecution, from which freedom could be bought only with gold, it has enslaved them in bondage worse than that from which they fled. The menwork in the packinghouses like slaves in hell (Sinclair 1 1). Thisstudy will focus on the experiences of Jewish immigrants as depicted inRiis, comparing those to the experiences of the Slovaks in Bell's novel.Despite some important differences among the experiences of the Jews andthe Slovaks, and the specific years examined, the studies are far morealike than different in their overall portraits of the suffering andexploitation of those immigrant groups in the era in which the industrialrevolution exploded. 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