The way the book starts is it gives a background of Jurgis and his family. He came to Chicago from Lithuania, while in Lithuania his wife Ona's father had died and left the family in a large amount of debt. The family had lost their farm and had very little savings, this is when they began to speak of traveling to America. Something that was very interesting to me is that Jurgis and h
is extended family (12 of them in total) all came to America. Jurgis finds a Lithuanian man that he had heard had made a great fortune, and this mans name is Jokubas. Really he was struggling to get by, he directed them to an overcrowded boarding house. From there he set out to go get a job. To me this is really interesting because we can see that the working conditions from the beginning were not even that great in America which immigrants thought of as the place of dreams. Sinclair shows how that this fantasy was so childish and that they didn't really know what it was like.
Something that I can relate back to our class is the start of chapter 3. This is where we see Jurgis taking a tour of Packington. He see's cattle all put together and living in horrible conditions just waiting to be killed at the end of the day. It talks about how spoiled and diseased meat is snuck into the actual meat that people are eating. This scares me because how do I know that this still isn't happening today? It honestly made me want to become a vegetarian. Jurgis works for 12 hours a day and makes a little bit over two dollars and he was happy with this. You can also see Americans taking advantage of the immigrants by when they went to go look at apartments the ones they see isn't as nice as the one that is pictured in the advertisement. They did this without Jurgis and they signed a rental for it and it shows just how mean people were then to these workers that do not know about their rights. It's crazy to read because when the lawyer is the guys friend you know that they are going to take advantage of you. Jurgis makes a friend that tells him all about the corruption in Packington. I think this is Sinclair showing America through true eyes.
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