The Count
Jurgis is named one thousand, one hundred and seventeen times. Ona, two hundred and twenty-five. Marija, two hundred and thirteen, almost as often as Ona. Elzbieta, one hundred and nineteen. And Connor, the man who wrecks the family, is named just twenty-one times.
This page has spoilers for what happens to each person. Every count is mine, from the Project Gutenberg text.
Jurgis
Jurgis Rudkus is a young giant from the Imperial Forest in Lithuania, a hunting preserve where his father and his father’s father lived. He came to America to earn the right to marry Ona. At the horse fair where he met her, he offered his father’s two horses for her, and her father refused.
He laughs at warnings. Men tell him the yards break people, and he calls them puny and says his back is broad. He is hired at Brown’s after waiting half an hour, and takes it as proof. Once he joins the union, he wants to follow the meetings, so he enrolls in a free night school to learn to read and speak English. He is the sort who tries.
By the end of the book he has been jailed, widowed, fired, laid off, tramped the country, helped rob a man and worked for a political boss, and he is a hotel porter. He is also the only member of the family who gets an answer.
Ona
Ona Lukoszaite is not quite sixteen at the wedding, small, fair and shy. Her father died, and his estate was tied up with creditors, which is why Jurgis could finally marry her. She is quick with figures, and it is Ona who works out the family budget for the house in her head.
She is also the one who carries the worst of the yards. The text says she was refused one day off after her wedding. She has a hidden shame, and when it comes out, it is because Connor, the boss, threatened the whole family’s jobs.
Ona dies in childbirth in the attic of Aniele’s boardinghouse. She is the heart of the book, and the book does not let her live.
The Family Around Them
Teta Elzbieta is Ona’s stepmother, with six children. Teta means aunt. She is careful, and when the family buys the house she is the one who has to put down the money. Near the end the text calls her a wonderfully wise little woman, and says her armor is impervious to Socialism.
Marija Berczynskas is Ona’s cousin, loud and enormously strong. As a girl she once nearly killed a man who beat her. She is engaged to Tamoszius Kuszleika, a tiny violinist who comes on Sundays and sits with his hat between his knees. When her can factory closes, she has to give up marrying.
Old Antanas, Jurgis’s father, is called Dede, which means grandfather. He is the meekest man in the book, sells his farm to come, and pays a third of his wages for a job in the pickle rooms. Chemicals soak through his new boots, sores open on his feet, and still he will not quit, because he remembers what the job cost.
Jonas is Elzbieta’s brother, who pushes a truck of hams, and disappears one Saturday night. Stanislovas, Kotrina, Vilimas and Nikalojus are the children. At fifteen Stanislovas is already working, and the two youngest boys, eleven and ten, are handed a quarter and a roll with a sausage in it and sent into the city to earn. Little Kristoforas, who cannot walk, is the baby.
Neighbors and Brokers
Jokubas Szedvilas runs a delicatessen, and he is the one who reads the deed. He is poor too; his shop is mortgaged. Aniele Jukniene is the widow who keeps the boardinghouse, with eight chickens on her back stairs.
The house agent is smooth, florid, and speaks their language, which is his advantage. The text never gives him a name. Madame Haupt is the midwife, who asks for ten dollars cash and then five.
The Yards
Connor is the boss of the loading gang. Miss Henderson is the woman whose house he sends Ona to. Together they use the one threat the yards always have: you will be fired. When Jurgis later meets Connor again, drunk, in a dark room, the same blind rage returns, and the same fight follows.
Jack Duane is a cheerful, college-bred thief who shares Jurgis’s cell. He is the first educated man Jurgis ever talks to, and he tells Jurgis about an invention of his that a big company took from him.
Mike Scully is the Democratic boss of the stockyards. Bush Harper, a night watchman who is also paid by the packers to report on his union, is his right hand. Scully lives in a fine house on a street that was paved and lit for his benefit. They show Jurgis how politics really works.
The Hall
First, the speaker. The man whose speech changes Jurgis is tall and gaunt, with a thin black beard and a deep voice, and Jurgis, the text says, does not even know the name of the orator.
Ostrinski is a Polish tailor of about fifty who speaks Lithuanian, takes Jurgis home and explains the Socialist party until after midnight. Tommy Hinds runs a small hotel where radicals gather, and Jurgis, by luck, gets a job there.
Nicholas Schliemann is a Swede and former philosophy professor. Mr. Lucas is a former traveling evangelist. They argue in front of a settlement millionaire named Fisher and an editor named Maynard. Freddie Jones, a drunk young man with a roll of bills, hands Jurgis a hundred-dollar bill earlier in the book.
How the Cast Fits Together
Here is a pattern I noticed, and it is my reading, not the book’s. Each helper in this book is also a toll. Szedvilas can read the deed, but he cannot stop the sale. Aniele takes in boarders, but she wants the rent. Madame Haupt will come, but not before the money.
The only people who give Jurgis anything for free are the ones in the last chapters. Ostrinski gives him a floor to sleep on and a night of explanation. Hinds gives him a job. A woman in the hall calls him comrade.
Where They End Up
Spoilers. Old Antanas dies of the cellar and the cough. Kristoforas dies. Jonas vanishes. Ona dies, and her baby is dead. Jurgis’s little son Antanas drowns in the mud of a street.
Stanislovas is killed by rats. Marija ends up in a house, working, and tells Jurgis she takes dope and will stay. Elzbieta and the younger children live on, with Jurgis’s help.
My reading, and it is an opinion: the book is about a family, but only Jurgis is given a way out. Everyone else stays in the ledger.
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments who you hoped would make it.
