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Slovak Immigrants in the Early 1900s

Thomas Bell, in Out of This Furnace, published in 1941, presents a fictional portrait of the life of three generations of Slovak immigrants in the United States of the early 1900s, emphasizing the struggles of these people as they carved out their existence in the steel mills of America.

The life of these struggling immigrants is so difficult that they inevitably find sense and comfort in their existence primarily in their families, in their communities. They have left the old country behind in order to pursue the American Dream, but they quickly discover that the dream is more of a nightmare.

Bell writes that George Kracha "came to America in the fall of 1881 . . . It may be that he hoped he was . . . leaving behind the endless poverty and oppression which were the birthrights of a Slovak peasant . . . He was bound for the hard-coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania, where his brother-in-law had a job on a railroad section gang" (3).

He is quickly reduced to an existence which has him on the edge of starvation, begging for food with gestures because he could not speak the language. He is forced to sleep in fields in the freezing weather.

When he finds his family, he is taken in with love and care, and the message of the book from that point forward is, essentially, that that is the only place --- in the family environment---that such love and care will be found in the land of the "American Dream."

Family life was a source of love and togetherness and mutual support, but it was never luxurious, to say the least. The physical environment was bleak, as Bell describes it: "Here and there patches of wood and tin had been nailed over cracks and knotholes to keep out the wind. On the bed's straw mattress was a gray blanket, two lumpy pillows and Elena's feather bed. The air in the room was clammy cold" (17). Again, the reality of life for the immigrant was far from a dream.

The world of work is similarly dep...

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Slovak Immigrants in the Early 1900s. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:15, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705045.html