History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York. On the very first page, Riis states, “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care (5).” In first-person, Riis discusses his observations through somewhat unbiased analysis, delivering cold, hard, and straightforward facts. Following the War of 1812, New York City had a population of roughly half a million, desperately in need of homes. The solutions were mediocre tenements: large spaces divided into cheaper, smaller rooms, regardless of whether or not there were windows. Some families were lucky, being able to afford the rooms with windows, while others had to live in pitch-black, damp, and tiny rooms literally in the center of the building. These tenements contained inadequate living conditions; disease murdered many citizens, causing a shortage of industrial workers. The Board of Health passed the “Tenement-House Act” in 1867,... ... middle of paper ... ...ew York City in the 19th century. The reader will realize not every immigrant coming to America for a better life will live out their dream. However, I would not recommend How the Other Half Lives to those uninterested in the origins of New York City, the 19th century, and optimists wanting to avoid negative ideas. The entire novel revolves around the crowded tenements and unfavorable conditions of the New York City slums in the mid to late 19th century, where the crowded populations caused mass sanitation problems and disease. Although charities and the hard-working aura of the citizens were mentioned, Riis focused mostly on the struggles of the time period. Despite this, I would highly recommend How the Other Half Lives to anyone looking for a fantastic read; Riis’ use of “muckraking” will show you an entirely different viewpoint from traditional nonfiction novels.
The World Fair of 1933 brought promise of new hope and pride for the representation of Chicago, America. As Daniel Burnham built and protected America’s image through the pristine face of the fair, underlying corruption and social pollution concealed themselves beneath Chicago’s newly artificial perfection. Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City meshes two vastly different stories within 19th century America and creates a symbolic narrative about the maturing of early Chicago.
The children in this book at times seem wise beyond their years. They are exposed to difficult issues that force them to grow up very quickly. Almost all of the struggles that the children face stem from the root problem of intense poverty. In Mott Haven, the typical family yearly income is about $10,000, "trying to sustain" is how the mothers generally express their situation. Kozol reports "All are very poor; statistics tell us that they are the poorest children in New York." (Kozol 4). The symptoms of the kind of poverty described are apparent in elevated crime rates, the absence of health care and the lack of funding for education.
Towards the end of the 19th century, reformers used many different tactics to encourage the public to advocate for social reforms. Jacob Riis used photographs of New York City’s slum tenements and its inhabitants to shock people with the truth. His book, How the Other Half Lives, provides a clear picture of the dangers that tenement life poses to middle-class values. Because all life is a product of its environment, Riis used pictures to encourage members of the middle class to see the poor’s struggles before it became a problem that undermined society’s ability to function. His approach had on tenement reform and the struggles of life in the tenement houses were detrimental to changing the poor’s way of life Jacob Riis, used a first-person perspective to explore the living conditions of that era. Riis was an immigrant, a photojournalist, a police reporter, and more importantly a social reformer He paints a very clear un-shielded
A suburban life is a paradise full of shopping, colorful gardens, and well-groomed homes. Despite all these benefits, a suburban life is an isolated life. People living in suburbs are rarely exposed to miseries in society. One of these conflicts is homelessness. When living in an environment surrounded by homes, individuals often have difficulty imagining not being able to sleep in a warm bed, eat a proper meal or even receive necessary medical attention. This grim situation is depicted in the writings of Jeannette Walls. In the autobiography The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls accurately portrays homelessness by explaining its causes, its impact upon daily life, and its effect on victimized families.
Michael MacDonald’S All Souls is a heart wrenching insider account of growing up in Old Country housing projects located in the south of Boston, also known as Southie to the locals. The memoir takes the reader deep inside the world of Southie through the eyes of MacDonald. MacDonald was one of 11 children to grow up and deal with the many tribulations of Southie, Boston. Southie is characterized by high levels of crime, racism, and violence; all things that fall under the category of social problem. Social problems can be defined as “societal induced conditions that harms any segment of the population. Social problems are also related to acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society” (Long). The social problems that are present in Southie are the very reasons why the living conditions are so bad as well as why Southie is considered one of the poorest towns in Boston. Macdonald’s along with his family have to overcome the presence of crime, racism, and violence in order to survive in the town they consider the best place in the world.
The book "How The Other Half Lives" written by Jacob Riis, sheds light on the living conditions in N.Y. city of the poor throughout the Progressive Era in tenement housing. Jacobs publication was meant to show the "other half" or "upper class" how bad it really was. Between 1869 and 1890, tenement housing almost tripled to 37,000 tenements in use. This over population was caused by the uproar of immigrants moving to America to start a new and better life, and almost all of the time starting at the bottom.
After reading from the novels The Last Hurrah and The Living is Easy, both surrounding the city of Boston in similar eras with similar views on public and political life, what comes to mind most of all is the portrayal of the middle class. This middle class is not the idea conjured from traditional historical figures, but rather a constantly fluctuating zone of monetary and social value. Being vague by definition, the middle class arises as people move from the inner city to the suburbs and form newly constructed neighborhoods, which were previously held by the wealthy. In The Living is Easy, Cleo desperately tries to rid herself of the stigmatism surrounding her race and the stereotypes, which follow it. By moving to Brookline, she attempts to move up in the world. The Irish immigrants in West’s novel are even more visible in The Last Hurrah. O’Connor’s novel fast-forwards to the beginning of the Irish expansion to the suburbs and into a state of normalcy and association with the middle class. Race is a prevalent issue in both novels and surrounds the commencement of moving to a new social and political stature within city society. While Cleo looks inward and remains aware of the state of her appearance and that of others around her, Skeffington is maintaining his own image and does not wish to evolve towards any new horizon. Racially, the novels’ protagonists share a differentiation from other people in their society. Cleo is of a minority among the middle class and Skeffington has made his life to serve and be idolized by them. With each story coming into contact with racial migration, it’s fair to say that the construction of each of these novels leaves the reader with a view of a changed city, where neighborhoods are changing...
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Riis overcame many obstacles to produce his book How the Other Half Lives which contains the struggles of poor people living in New York. Through his book Riis wanted to bring to life the suffering of these people. He wanted the upper classmen or someone with power to do something about the poverty in this great city. Riis knew of the poverty and wanted everyone to be aware of it. He did so through articles, newspapers, and his book which contained pictures and stories about mothers who were forced to murder or abandon their babies. This essay will describe American life during the late nineteenth century; the harsh decisions mothers had to face, and how immigration affected New York.
The book “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff is a memoir written about the author’s childhood memories and experiences. The author shows many different characters within the book. Many of them are just minor character that does not affect the author much in his life choices and thoughts throughout his growth. But there are some that acts as the protagonist and some the antagonist. One of them is Dwight, the protagonist’s or Jack’s stepfather. This character seems to be one of the characters that inhibit Jack’s choices and decisions. This character plays a huge role in Jack’s life as it leaves a huge scar in his memory. The author here spends the majority of time in this character in the memoir to show the readers the relationship between Jack and Dwight.
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
George Saunders, a writer with a particular inclination in modern America, carefully depicts the newly-emerged working class of America and its poor living condition in his literary works. By blending fact with fiction, Saunders intentionally chooses to expose the working class’s hardship, which greatly caused by poverty and illiteracy, through a satirical approach to criticize realistic contemporary situations. In his short story “Sea Oak,” the narrator Thomas who works at a strip club and his elder aunt Bernie who works at Drugtown for minimum are the only two contributors to their impoverished family. Thus, this family of six, including two babies, is only capable to afford a ragged house at Sea Oak,
She also says Manhattan is becoming “a kind of gated island for the superrich” — an assertion belied by her own “cheap sublets” and her magical walks along (as of press time) still toll-free sidewalks. The stridency of her critique of the “glossiness of late capitalism” feels out of step with the rest of the book’s subtle analysis — for example, of how society routinely fails the loneliest among us, as happened during the AIDS crisis. Reading this book on a lonesome business trip, I found myself wondering if “The Lonely City” made the exact wrong or exact right companion for forlorn airport loitering and desolate continental breakfasting.
Colson Whitehead explores this grand and complex city in his collection of essays The Colossus of New York. Whitehead writes about essential elements to New York life. His essays depict the city limits and everyday moments such as the morning and the subway, where “it is hard to escape the suspicion that your train just left... and if you had acted differently everything would be better” (“Subway” 49). Other essays are about more once in a while moments such as going to Central Park or the Port Authority. These divisions are subjective to each person. Some people come to New York and “after the long ride and the tiny brutalities... they enter the Port Authority,” but for others the Port Authority is a stop in their daily commute (“The Port Authority” 22).Nonetheless, each moment is a part of everyone’s life at some point. Many people live these moments together, experiencing similar situations. We have all been in the middle of that “where ...
Colson Whitehead ponders the essence of New York in his collection of essays titled, The Colossus of New York. Throughout the entire collection of essaysWhitehead inquires about what New York stands for based on the journey’s of its inhabitants and visitors. By establishing a sense of authenticity and creating an intimate relationship between him and the reader, Whitehead effectively provides his readers with a genuine account of New York. This genuineness found in Whitehad’s writing has not been met without criticism. Wyatt Mason’s critique of Whitehead’s essays reiterates throughout the review that Whitehead’s account go New York isn’t unique to New York and that the essayist isn’t particularly attentive to detail. While I agree with the