Why did Jurgis attack Connor?

When he gets out of jail, he has decided to become a real criminal. So, after Jurgis is released, he decides to go seek out Jack Duane to see if he can be of any help to Jack. He finds Jack Duane in the back room of a pawnbroker and a fence for stolen goods.

Jurgis explains that he’s in jail because he hit his boss. His boss “treated [Jurgis] mean” (17.25). The prisoner responds that he’s a “cracksman” – someone who brakes into safes.

Incarcerated on Christmas Eve, Jurgis hears the church bells and curses the injustice and insanity of American society.

Scully wants him there because a strike is imminent. When the strike takes place, he then encourages Jurgis to be a scab and use the strike to his advantage. … A strike by meat cutters and butchers actually took place in 1904. Sinclair uses this incident as the basis for his story.

Jurgis goes to jail for attacking the man who bullied his wife into prostitution. The problem with Chicago business is that it has invaded every part of the city’s social structure. It has even contaminated the agencies that are supposed to control and restrict business: the public offices and the court system.

Freddie provides Jurgis with a feast of food and drink.

What does Jurgis believe will happen to Connor? Jurgis believes Connor will make his family pay for the attack. Describe Pat Callahan. Also known as “Growler” was a butcher boy and a bruiser of local reputation had gone into politics almost as soon as he learned how to talk.

Harper can do nothing for him except get his bail lowered so that Jurgis can pay it. He advises Jurgis to skip town.

Unable to gain lodging for the night with a $100 bill, Jurgis attempts to change it by buying a beer. The bartender, however, only provides change for a $1 bill, and a fight ensues. Jurgis winds up in jail again.

Ona tries to repeat Teta Elzbieta’s lie about Ona’s sickness. Jurgis tells her outright that she is lying to him. He knows that she has been downtown – he saw her get off the streetcar. Ona begins to cry hysterically (again).

TestNew stuff! Why is Jurgis forced to stay in jail longer? Because he could not pay the “court costs” of a dollar and a half so he had to stay there three extra days.

Phil Connor Ona’s boss, who sexually harasses her at the factory where she works.

They cannot afford to have Stanislovas lose his job. This disastrous day has two results for Stanislovas: he loses the use of three of his fingers from the frostbite, and Jurgis has to beat him every morning to make him go out to work during the winter.

Jurgis comes to hate himself for working against union interests. He becomes bad-tempered and he starts drinking again. One day, the news comes that a couple of cattle have escaped out into the crowd of striking workers. The packers put Jurgis and his crew on a truck so that they can go and fight these workers.

Jurgis was now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the change day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had gotten used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat and the stench, and the fact that he was a “scab” and knew it and despised himself.

Sobbing hysterically, Ona confesses that Phil Connor, a boss at her factory, continually harassed her and pleaded with her to become his mistress. She tells Jurgis that Connor eventually raped her in the factory after everyone had gone home and threatened to arrange the firings of every wage earner in her household.

Jurgis realizes that it is a brothel. Jurgis spots Marija, and they manage to talk a bit before the police herd them into the police station. Marija explains that neither she nor Teta Elzbieta could support the children with legitimate jobs.

Around Thanksgiving, Ona doesn’t return home one night after work. Jurgis goes to her factory the next morning to wait for her. When she arrives, Ona explains that she couldn’t make it home because of the storm and spent the night with a friend.

Freddie is so drunk that he can’t open the dining room doors by himself. He needs to get his butler, Hamilton, to do it for him.

Jurgis says that he will make the money and work harder. This is a hard promise that Jurgis will have to keep to be able to survive in America. He should work harder but everyone should. If only Jurgis works harder, they will all succeed together.

After two weeks of futile searching and odd jobs, Jurgis meets an old acquaintance from his union. The man leads him to a factory where harvesting machines are produced, and the foreman gives Jurgis a job. The working conditions are much better, and the factory is a paragon of philanthropy and goodwill.

What does Jurgis feel toward s the evangelist and his message? He is nothing compared to some. Others go to the extreme, while Jurgis is what he is.

The idea behind capitalism is that you can be born poor and become rich just so long as you are willing to work hard. Jurgis totally buys into this dream of capitalism when he first arrives in America.

Jurgis and others are shown how to vote and are paid to vote the democratic ticket. Through Scully and the elected politicians, Jurgis learns of the graft and corruption running rampant in Packingtown, which is far greater than the scams he has encountered at the factory.

Jack Duane gets caught red-handed breaking into a safe once he and Jurgis start their life of crime together. So he leaves Chicago on bail. By this time, Jurgis is deep enough into Chicago’s criminal world that he can manage without Jack Duane’s assistance.

But at least he has a job. During the summer, Elzbieta’s sons take up disturbing habits — swearing, smoking, gambling, and not coming home — and in order to break them of these habits, Elzbieta herself goes to work, enabling her sons to return to school. … She does this in order to allow her children to attend school.

His first job in the killing beds at Brown’s meatpacking plant is hard and dirty, yet Jurgis is proud of himself. He works this job until an injury puts him out of work for good.

Stanislovas is a teenaged son of Teta Elzbieta. He lies about his age to take a job in a slaughterhouse, but tries to avoid work when a dangerous snowstorm hits. Jurgis beats him as punishment. Later, Stanislovas falls asleep in a factory and gets eaten alive by rats.

The main plot of The Jungle follows Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, who came to the United States in the hope of living the American dream, and his extended family, which includes Ona, Jurgis’s wife; Elzbieta, Ona’s stepmother; Elzbieta’s six children; Marija, Ona’s cousin; and Dede Rudkus, Jurgis’s father.

During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. … And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning—which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export.

What has actually been happening is that Ona has been raped by her boss, who has also blackmailed her into going to a brothel downtown to become a prostitute several times. Jurgis is so outraged to hear this that he runs out immediately and attacks the boss, Connor.

Teta Elzbieta comes home. She has gotten the money for Ona’s mass. Teta Elzbieta sits next to Jurgis and pleads with him. She begs Jurgis to pull himself together, get a job, and help the family.

One Saturday, after a heavy rain, Jurgis returns home to discover that Antanas has drowned. Antanas’ death is the second central turning point in The Jungle. Just when Jurgis’ life appears to be back on track, just when he begins to have hope for the future, fate transforms his dreams into nightmares.

Jurgis isn’t really interested in religion. He’s just looking for shelter from the cold. Jurgis listens to this preacher and starts to feel resentful. Even though the preacher means well, he is comfortable and warm.

By now, Ona is pregnant with her second child. Premature labor, combined with her weak physical state, results in her death – and the baby’s death – during childbirth.

When Connor finally rapes Ona and bullies her into keeping quiet about it, it’s Miss Henderson’s brothel where Connor makes Ona turn tricks.

Once again out on the streets, Jurgis discovers that Marija has become a prostitute. He goes to her for help and learns that Stanislovas has died.

Jurgis goes to jail for attacking the man who bullied his wife into prostitution. The problem with Chicago business is that it has invaded every part of the city’s social structure. It has even contaminated the agencies that are supposed to control and restrict business: the public offices and the court system.

Ona’s supervisor, Miss Henderson, the superintendent’s jilted mistress, runs a brothel. Her prostitutes get jobs easily in Ona’s department. She hates Ona because she is a decent married woman and her toadies make Ona miserable. Ona gives birth to a healthy boy.

Incarcerated on Christmas Eve, Jurgis hears the church bells and curses the injustice and insanity of American society.