Chapters 10 and 11

In these two chapters Jurgis and his family go through really hard times. They begin to realize that life is not easy and things definitely do not go as planned.

"This was in truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best, ought they not be able to keep alive?"

Almost every family member works and does their best at it. Jurgis works from early in the morning til late in the night, and only stays home on Sunday. Soon after Ona has her baby, she returns to work. Still they can barely manage to get by. Times haven't changed much. Even now families work as hard as they can and like the family in the book they barely manage to live.

"The coming out of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men at the salons."

This was a sign of hope for the family. Even when they were barely making it, and they were so miserable. The baby came and Jurgis forgot bout his troubles and was able to realize that he had more important things to worry about than going out.

In chapter eleven a bad turn of events happened to the family.

"She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what was the matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had come to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance. There was a 'run on the bank,' they told her then, but she did not know what that was, and turned from one person to another, trying on agony of fear to make out what they meant."

Marija had put her money in a bank and as she walked past it on her way to work one morning she noticed that people were surrounding it. They said that there was a "run on the bank" which means people who are members of the bank believe for one reason or another that the bank will fail, so they try to withdraw all of their money at one time.

"The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned." 

Jurgis hurt his foot and was ordered out of work for weeks. The book takes place in early nineteen hundreds, and workers compensation did not begin til mid nineteen hundreds. So the company that Jurgis worked for did not cover his injuries. Therefore he would be out of work with no pay. No one knows when something like this might happen, and the family definitely was not prepared for it. This is bad for many reasons but mainly because if Jurgis cannot go to work, he could lose his job to someone else that can be at work every day. The family is going through some hard times right now in the novel and it doesn’t look like they are going to make it much longer. Especially if they have another mouth to feed.

"It was a week before Christmas that they first great storm came, and the soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a lion."

This is a simile that compares Jurgis' soul with a lion.