"Cliff Notes - Jungle, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

to awful occupational diseases, yet the packers take no steps to
protect the employees. They steal water from the city and
pollute the Chicago River--and the city government looks the
other way.

Jurgis's family struggles through their second winter in
America. Spring comes, with its flooding rains, and then
summer, with its stifling heat. Marija's factory reopens, but
she loses her job anyway and becomes a meat trimmer at half her
first wage. Ona has a baby boy and harms her health by
returning to work prematurely.

Their third winter, Jurgis injures himself on the job and is
out of work for three months. When spring arrives, Jonas simply
disappears, reducing the family's income by a third. Two of
Elzbieta's boys leave school to sell newspapers. When Jurgis
feels fit to work, he finds his old job gone. Finally, he takes
a Job at Durham's fertilizer plant. Elzbieta goes to work, and
the boys go to school again. Jurgis, a pariah because of the
smell of fertilizer he carries with him, starts to drink. Ona
is pregnant again and prey to fits of weeping. Jurgis discovers
that she has been sleeping with Phil Connor, one of the bosses,
who threatened to have everyone in her family fired if she
didn't submit to him. Jurgis nearly kills Connor and is sent to
jail. Stanislovas visits him and reports that Ona is sick,
Marija injured, and the family almost starving. Their only
income is from what the children can earn selling newspapers.

After his release from jail, Jurgis discovers that the family
has been evicted from the house they had struggled so hard to
keep. They are back in the lodging house where they first lived
when they came to the city. Jurgis finds Ona in labor and
persuades a midwife to help, to no avail. Ona and the baby
die.

Because of his little son Antanas, Jurgis stays and gets a
job with a maker of farm equipment. After nine days, his
department closes, and Jurgis is laid off. He gets another job
at a steel plant. When his son accidentally drowns, Jurgis
turns his back on Chicago and becomes a hobo. In the fall he
returns to the city and gets a job digging a tunnel. An
on-the-job injury puts him in the hospital. After he gets out,
he joins the army of unemployed men hunting for work during a
recession in January 1904.

He starts begging and meets the drunken scion of a
meat-packing family. Jurgis goes home with him and leaves with
a full stomach and a hundred-dollar bill. When a bartender
cheats him out of the money Jurgis attacks him, is arrested and
jailed.