"Cliff Notes - Jungle, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)For the newlyweds' relatives--especially Marija Berczynskas, Ona's cousin and the organizer of the festivities--there is further reason for despair. In the old country, the guests chipped in to pay for the wedding party and to leave the newlyweds a little extra money with which to start their married life. Yet here in Packingtown, the stockyard district of Chicago, the old communal traditions are dying out among the immigrant workers. So many freeloaders have come to the party that Jurgis and Ona must begin their married life in debt. Still, Jurgis faces the future bravely. "Leave it to me," he tells Ona. "I will earn more money--I will work harder." Jurgis first saw Ona a year and a half earlier, at a fair in Lithuania, where he had gone to sell two of his father's horses. She was fourteen, and he was about twenty five. It was love at first sight for Jurgis, but Ona's father, "a rich man," would not let Jurgis have her. The next time he saw her, her father had died, the farm had been sold, and the family was adrift. Still, Ona's attachment to her stepmother, Elzbieta, kept her from marrying Jurgis. Jonas, Elzbieta's brother, suggested that they might have a better future in America, where a friend had become rich in a Jurgis's father, Dede Antanas) and Elzbieta's six children--in early summer. Once in Chicago, the first order of business was to find shelter and work. Jonas's friend, Kokubas Szedvilas, a poor delicatessen owner, acted as their guide. He sent them to a filthy lodging house, where they determined to stay only until they got work. Jurgis found work as a sweeper on the killing beds at Brown's, a meat-packing company. Marija found work as a can painter, and Jonas got a job pushing a truck at Durham's, Brown's rival. Though at first Dede Antanas couldn't find work, they decided they could afford to buy a "new" house, using some of their savings as a down payment. Finally, Dede Antanas got a job in the damp "pickle room" at Durham's by promising to kick back a third of his salary to the man who hired him. That experience and others began to shake Jurgis's faith in America. Both Jonas and Marija had gotten their jobs through the misfortunes of others. In his job Antanas had to shovel the residue of chemically treated meat onto a truck headed for the cannery. Jurgis saw pregnant cows butchered and their unborn calves illegally mixed with other carcasses. He even helped |
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