Ch.+22

Chapter 22 Summary

Jurgis does not shed a tear in sadness; instead he asks how Antanas had died. Marija responds that he fell off the sidewalk because he was outside playing. Jurgis walks out of the house not knowing where he is heading. He ends up taking a train that he eventually gets off. He decides to live the life of a tramp. He tries to buy food but a farmer sends him away. On his second attempt he is granted a meal, and the farmer wants to hire Jurgis but his mind is clear, he is not going to be attached to anyone. For the most part Jurgis does not rely on farmers for food, but instead he steals and manages on his own. He does do some odd jobs for food, but he meets other tramps that show him how to live. Most tramps that Jurgis encounters have had similar lives. Jurgis does get a job during the harvest because farmers are willing to pay a lot of money for help harvesting their crop. He makes a fair amount of money, but he wastes it away on a prostitute because he does no longer needs money to survive.

Characters Jurgis Aniele Marija Teta Elzbieta

“Now he was going to be free, to tear off his shackles, to rise up and fight. (212)”

“So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them. (213)”

“To a man whose whole life had consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day – and to be now his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a new adventure every hour! (217)”

“Ah, what agony was that, what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of his old life came forth to scourge him! What terror to see what he had been and now could never be – to see Ona and his child and his own dead self stretching out their arms to him,calling to him across a bottomless abyss – and to know that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness! (221)”