Loss is inevitable, there is a time in everyone's life that this pain will be felt, yet dealing with it shows the true character of the person. The book of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters displays the true meaning of that statement. The characters throughout explain the many struggles faced in their life, all the way until their death. In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the main character is doomed from the very beginning. He demonstrates the life of an immigrant, poor, nasty, brutish. He along with his family undergo massive loss and devastation throughout the entire book. The difference in background, race, minority, plays no role in the extreme suffering each and everyone of these characters felt. Hope and love surrounds Jurgis’ family as they enter the United States as new citizens. Newly married Jurgis and Ona are hopeful their marriage, family and American Dream will not be oppressed by the fact they are …show more content…
A week after Ona gives birth, her bitter boss makes her return to work. She is very upset, and her health takes a turn for the worst. Though still working the family is stressed about making ends meet. Ona is forced into prostitution and raped by her boss. When Jurgis finds about about this, he is more than livid. Jurgis goes right to his face, and ends up brawling. The fight makes Jurgis go to jail, which he finds more enjoyable than being free due to the roof over his head and being fed well. While in jail, he begins making a friend who is extremely knowledgeable about the criminal underground. Jurgis saw the money to come with being a criminal, and saw it as the best way to provide for his struggling family. Hilldrup faces the same difficulty as Jurgis. He feels defeated, like he cannot prove himself, so he turns to money as a way of comfort, no matter the way he gets it. Yet, still no one wants to be apart of him at the end because he was a
Jurgis always struggled with money even when Ona was on the verge of dying. Jurgis finally convinced the women but Ona didn’t make it on time because it was too late already. Upton Sinclair shows you the struggle Jurgis went through with money and it wasn’t a fair life for him. When Jurgis lost both Ona and his son Antanas he was begging and a drunk man gave him a 100 dollar bill, that next day he enters a bar to receive change but the bartender tells him he has to buy a drink first, once he does the bartender only gives him 97 cents and refuses to give him his change. Jurgis then gets in a fist fight with him but then is sent to Jail. Once he was a prison he realized the life of crime was the best way to survive as an immigrant, then Jurgis finally loses his hope of getting that American dream he always wanted. Jurgis had a good reason to feel like this because he kept getting turned down by jobs and had nowhere to stay, he was homeless.
Do you have what it takes to push through the hardest times of your life? Could you lose absolutely everything important to you and still keep moving forward? James and Jurgis did indeed, as you will find out. While reading this essay keep an opened mind about the time period and try to picture the events they went through. As we follow Upton Sinclair the writer of The Jungle and Cliff Hollingsworth, the writer of Cinderella Man, we will see how Jurgis Rudkus and James Braddock are similar and different over the period of their hardships.
Second, the most evident way Jurgis was his own antagonist was when he attacked Ona’s boss. By this time, he was married to Ona, and she was very dear to him. So when her boss blackmails Ona into obeying his every command, no matter how demoralized it may be, Jurgis gets very angry, so he goes and attacks her boss. The people
People in this story live in a very dis honest world, it's a rough life and it's almost impossible to live comfortably and make an honest living. Jurgis tried to be an honest working man but all the frauds and dishonest people around him made an influence. You see the dishonesty throughout the book cover to cover. Jurgis has several encounters with people who constantly try to cheat him out of his money or are dishonest about their intentions. You can see one encounter in the early pages of the book when jurgis and his family first arrive to america, they're looking for kettles and pots for there new house and the man that they bought them from cheated them out of a few pots. You can also see this late story when jurgis is trying to get his 100 dollars changed the man he asked him to change it. The man took the money from him and changed him 95 cents.
During a person's lifetime, he or she will have to suffer from loss. Loss is seen through The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield. Throughout these two texts, loss severely impacts the view of the story. In both The Grapes of Wrath and The Queen of Versailles, loss brings nothing but stress and sadness. The authors of these two texts clearly makes an effort to portray that there is no possible way to avoid this burden.
When his wife doesn’t return home at the normal times he's starts getting suspicious and later finds out that her boss,Connor, is forcing her to sleep with him. Sinclair describes Connor as this “a big,red-faced Irishman,coarse-featured, and smelling of liquor,” Sinclair 183 and his image is what most symbolize most bosses back then. The bosses were fat,ugly, and mean, they symbolize the capitalism in America feeding on the poorer people just to make themselves richer. Throughout the chapter Sinclair keeps using repetition to remind of us that the family is poor and has no power. Sinclair tell us that the reason Ona was trying to keep quiet was that Connor threaten would he “would all of us lose our places,” Sinclair 181 meaning that he would cause all of them to lose their job. Connor symbolizes the power and greed of the higher ranked people in American society being able to do what they want. These events caused Jurgis to fly into a rage and rush to find where Connor is and beats him to a pulp. He however is caught and sent to jail for 30 days during Christmas. In jail he starts doubting everything he believes in about America and starts losing
As the story goes on Ona and her baby Antanas both die. Ona during child birth and Antanas will drowned in front of the house. Jurgis will then move out of the city to the suburbs leave all of his family behind. Later returning to Chicago and getting himself into a lot of trouble with the law. After some time of being in and out of jail Jurgis finally gets a job working at a hotel. He will become back in touch with his family that he left and begin to support them on what he makes by working at the hotel.
Connor who is Ona’s boss has taken her to downtown and has been blackmailing Ona into becoming a prostitute after her hours as a factory laborer so that her family will not be ruined and they can keep their jobs."We could never get anything to do--here--again. He--he meant it--he would have ruined us”. (Pg,151). Jurgis can not control himself and attacks Connor which leads him to be in jail. They lost almost everything from Old Antanas to their house and even Ona later on. Jurgis would not go to jail if Ona did not suffer from sexual abuse and their family would not gradually used up, tortured, and destroyed, because the Socialism’s principles are equality of all people, cooperation is better than competition and help for those who need it. It fulfill capitalism’s failure which it only provides goods and services if there is a market for them and thus, does not have potential to satisfy human needs.( "What Socialism Is." World Socialist Movement. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014). It will provide jurgis’s family help, the right to access all of the sources and especially
Jurgis and his family were faced with many predicaments related to these poor surroundings and circumstances. The family hastily saw that they must enter the competition forced upon them in a social Darwinist fashion. When he first arrived in Packingtown, Jurgis found work quickly in the meat packing industry because of his strong, young stature. As the years went by, however, and he grew plagued with injuries and financial troubles, Jurgis found work to be evermore difficult to obtain and hold. The social system cracked down on the family and offered nowhere for the Rudkus' to turn for help.
Some odd stuff been happening with ona she stay out all night and lying to jurgis and to the family about where she been and ect. Well she came to her senses of reality she told him everything that he needs to know and he went back to jail and he seen jack there again they talk a little more and jack gave jurgis information about a plan that helps him gets out of jail faster and getting on the gauders good side and jack told jurgis as soon he gets out that call him and well jurgis took that offer and he gave jack a call and well they go on missions together and rob people and steal cops stuff and then went to a party with jack and met a lot of cops there that really liked jurgis and jurgis met this guy there too (which i don’t know the of.) that he got a job for jurgis that involves a lot of money if he was looking for that gold.
The author of this piece is positing the difference between herself, and her sister. The author is an American citizen by her marriage to an American. The author’s sister who came to American a year before the author, married an Indian man from her own culture who also resides in America. The author’s sister is not a naturalized citizen and lives and works in America on her Green Card status. The author discusses how she felt the need to assimilate with her new American culture, while her sister was just residing and working in the country and still hoping to return to India when she retires. The focus of the piece is the contrast between the two sisters and their individual points of view regarding American citizenship.
For reasons unknown the people of Spoon River have continued to make the same mistake over, and over, and over again. The people of Spoon River have a nasty habit of sleeping with the enemy. That is to say they surround themselves with those that seek to harm them, both mentally and physically. Some examples of this sort of behavior is Loise Smith, Dora Williams, and Nellie Clark. Loise Smith for instance was dropped by her husband for another women. Dora Williams married three times before meeting her end at the hands of a lover. Nellie Clark was sexually abused at a young age, this haunted her for the
There is a shift towards a new contemporary marriage. This shift includes an increase in cohabiting. The film Our Family Wedding illustrates this trend; Marcus and Lucia have been living with each other prior to their marriage and having sex. The increase in cohabitation is very large and almost half of those who choose to cohabitate eventually marry (Amato et al., 2007). Another recent change towards contemporary marriage is interracial or intermarriage. This trend is blatantly illustrated in the film because the bride is Latina and the groom is African American. The book mentions that this shift toward intermarriage is especially high for newlyweds, which helps cement the ideas of the director. Also, younger and better-educated Americans are more likely to engage in interracial marriage (Lee and Edmonston, 2005:7; Wang 2012). The director, who wrote Lucia and Marcus’ characters as individuals who had finished their undergraduate degree and in the process of obtaining their
The first day in the United States is one of the best day and most thrilling days in my life. My father and my older sister move to Malaysia to get a job and support our family due to financial difficulty and lack of job opportunity in Burma. After a few years, my father and my sister were able to enter as immigrant and they were sent to the United States as immigrants through United Nation. After being apart with my father and my sister for more than a decade, my parents decide to move completely to America where more opportunities are available for a brighter future. My family faces many obstacles during the process of migrating to America. Despite all the struggle that are on our way, my family finally arrives in the United States and face major changes in life.
Another form of exploitation that doesn’t allow Jurgis and his family to achieve their American dream is the long hours of labor they must work in order to maintain the family alive. These unhealthy long hours of labor that they must work brings the family physical and mental pain. When Jurgis starts to work in the meat packing plant he is exited and happy to have a job, soon after he discovers that he is engaged in unfair labor activities as well as unsafe food handling. In chapter 11 Jurgis suffers from a terrible accident at work. The company doctor tells him that he'll be laid up for months with a severe ankle and foot injury. The accident poses a terrible problem for the family. Without Jurgis' wages, they might starve. “It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the