The main reason why Jurgis and his family moves from Lithuania is so they can have a better life as the American Dream says they can. Very quickly they realize it isn’t the life they thought it’d be. Everyone struggles to even find a job and when they do, the jobs are hard and low paying. They find out that the idea that anyone can be successful if they work hard is not true. Jurgis and everyone else in his family work as hard as they can, but they barely make enough to live. There are many things that prevent them from becoming the successful American that they are promised.
One of the things that keep Jurgis from attaining his dream of becoming successful is the classes. The American Dream says that there are no classes that would keep people from achieving their dreams. Jurgis and his family believe this and continue to believe in this until it is much too late to turn back. Jurgis is arrested and sent to prison for assaulting a man. In court, he can’t do a thing to defend himself.
“Is there any truth in this story, Mr. Conner?”
“Not a particle, your Honor…” (Sinclair 167).
The Judge immediately dismisses Jurgis’s reasoning as false when Mr. Conner, a man with connections, says it’s not true. Why is this? Why is Jurgis’s story dismissed, but Mr. Conner’s is accepted as the truth? Jurgis finds out than there is a class system, it’s just not the same as in Lithuania, which is based on hereditary.
When Jurgis first got a job, it excited him. The interview was short; all the employer needed to know was that he was foreign and couldn’t speak English. The job it’s self is hard, but Jurgis is still glad to work. Anything making money for his family is good. But later in the book, he is trying to find a job, but he can’t because he is blacklisted. He tries anyways, looking in newspapers for jobs. When he goes to look at one, he find that they are different than he.
“…a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of wonderful positions he had on hand…he could only promise to come in again when he had to dollars to invest.” (197).
The people who run these are “smooth-tongued”; they are well educated and can make money by themselves. Being well educated makes them more fit for better jobs, with less work. Jurgis can only do the lowest paying jobs because he is foreign and speaks no English. The social barriers stop him for getting anywhere.
Throughout the book, Jurgis struggles to provide for himself and his family. The American Dream says it will be easy, that anyone can become successful. Jurgis struggles with everything he tries to do and eventually gives up everything stacks against him. He can’t make any money, the justice system failed him, and getting a good paying job is impossible because he is foreign. Jurgis comes to realize that all that he was promised by the American Dream, success, happiness, and freedom, is all just a falsification made to trap willing victims.
