Ch.+28

Chapter 28 Summary

The judge of the court case is the same judge that tried Jurgis when he beat Phil Connors. However, the judge did not recognize him, and he allowed Jurgis off and Marija had to pay a five dollar fine. Marija tells Jurgis about the horrible conditions of the brothel, and while she is getting paid up to thirty dollars a night she is barely able to make money because of the huge expenses. The mistress also gives the women dope and Marija is addicted. Marija says Teta Elzbieta would love to see Jurgis, but he is skeptical. He wants to find a job before he sees her so she does not think that he is just looking for her to give him a place to stay. He spends the next two days looking for jobs, and on the eve of the second night he wonders into a communist meeting. Jurgis falls asleep not aware of what is going on, but a woman wakes him up and Jurgis notices how entranced she is, and he starts paying attention to the speaker. He becomes absorbed with what the speaker is saying, and he feels that he is speaking to him.

Characters Jurgis Marija Madame Polly Simpson

"Sick?" she said. "Hell!" (Marija had learned to scatter her conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule driver.) "How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life? (295)"

“And so you return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours for another's advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter. (301)”

“There was an unfolding of vistas before him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring, a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no longer – there were powers within him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending, agelong wonders struggling to be born; and he sat oppressed with pain and joy, while a tingling stole down into his finger tips, and his breath came hard and fast. The sentences of this man were to Jurgis like the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of emotions surged up in him – all his old hopes and longings, his old griefs and rages and despairs. (307-308)”