Immigrant Experiences in Two Works

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 Sinclair examines the living and working conditions of Lithuanian immigrants in the meatpacking industry of Chicago at the turn of the century.

Because his non-fictional study focuses on a relatively fixed period, Riis's work is the most discouraging. The immigrants he depicts in words and photographs seem stuck in a hell on earth, whereas in the fictional works of Bell and Sinclair, the immigrants are able to improve their lives through political action and union organization.

The first striking element of Riis's portrayal of Jewish immigrants is what could easily be read as the author's bias against Jews, with references to "the

. . .
he hard-work of the Jews, their economical uses of materials, their hard-headedness in all money-oriented enterprises. Riis bemoans that the Jews resist learning English (106), but at the same time this reliance on their traditional language serves as a glue which holds their community together and protects it from assimilation. Obviously, their lack of skills in English is not so great that it prevents them from relative success in the pursuit of money, which is the heart of Riis's portrait of Jewish immigrants. With respect to women, Riis simply does not provide much information to differentiate between the experiences of males and females. The only dividing line seems to be between those old enough to work and those not, the latter including only the youngest children, boys and girls. Otherwise, Riis's account suggests that gender is insignificant among the Jews in terms of work. The portrait of the Slovak family in Bell's novel begins with the same emphasis on money--the Slovaks are poverty-stricken as are Riis's Jews, both groups fleeing lives of poverty, with the added dimension of religious/racial oppression suffered by the Jews. The Jewish immigrants described by Riis are already established in their lives as a community,
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Approximate Word count = 1885
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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