Student

Reading Guide for The Jungle
HIST 106-528
Hilton

* Where did Jurgis and his family come from? Lithuania

* Who are the main characters, and how are they related to one another?

* Jurgis Rudkus is a strong-willed Lithuanian who wants a better life for his family. He hears about the freedoms of the United States and decides to emigrate. He works hard, knowing that the welfareof his family and friends depends on him.
* Ona Rudkus, a sixteen-year-old, is married to a strong Lithuanian farmer named Jurgis. She had a child named Antanas and heard of the greatness of The United States from her husband, who had never before let her down. Later in the story, while giving birth to her second child, she dies from blood loss.
* Marija Berczynskas, a masculine woman,who is Ona’s cousin, has a dream to marry a musician and tour with him around the United States. After Ona’s death, and Jurgis's abandonment, she gives up and becomes a prostitute to help feed the few children left.
* Elzbieta, Ona’s stepmother, is not very fond of Jurgis. She takes care of the children

Phil Connor -  Ona’s boss, who sexually harasses her at the factory where she works. Abullying, depraved man, Connor represents the moral corruption of power in Chicago as well as the complicated relationship between politics, crime, and business. He has ties to all three and, thus, has the power to destroy Jurgis’s life.
* Dede Antanas Rudku -  Jurgis’s father, who travels to America with the rest of the family. A proud man, Dede Antanas is prevented by his old age fromobtaining a job through normal means. He has to resort to the humiliation of paying a man a third of his wages in return for a job, whose unsanitary and unsafe working conditions destroy his health.

* What jobs did each person hold? How did they get their jobs? How did they lose their jobs? Marija works in a canning factory and later a beef trimmer, the little boy works a lard machine. Jurgis isin the meat packing industry and later a fertilizer mill, Ona sews ham covers. Nikalojus and Vilimas, Teta Elzbieta’s ten- and eleven-year-old sons, are newspaper sellers

* What are their views of America at the beginning of the novel, and how do their ideas change? Great place for freedom and work. They soon figure out that’s not the case.

* What are their views of unions, and how dothese views change? Didn’t like them at first cause he just thought people who didn’t like working were lazy, but later they support unions to help better the working and labor environment. The wage earners in the family all join unions. Jurgis begins to recruit other Lithuanians for the union with a zealous fervor, often frustrated by their ignorance and indifference. Their optimism and naïvecommitment to the American Dream remind him of the misguided views he held when he first arrived in America.

* What are their views of child labor? Don’t think children should have to work, but they have no choice and need the children’s help.

* What were the family’s goals, and what factors prevented them from achieving them? Own the house, only Jurgis work, live the American dream andultimately it all went to shit because of American corruption.

* What are the major companies in the novel? How do they operate? What kinds of products do they make?

* Which characters die, and what causes their deaths? Ona dies of childbirth and Antanas dies in a muddy street. Dede Antanas, Jurgis’s father, is at a very old age and insists to help Jurgis and the family pay for thehouse and food, but the working conditions get too hard for him and he dies from a lung infection. Stanislovas Lukoszas, a young 13 year old boy, he is Elizibetas last son, he works in one of Durhams factories and get locked in after falling asleep, and gets eaten alive by rats. Teta Elzbieta’s youngest child, Kristoforas, dies after eating bad meat.

* What is graft, and how does it...