In a book by Victor Turner titled The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Turner discusses the idea of liminality and communitas in a few of his chapters. Liminality refers to being on the threshold between two states, and communitas is the Spanish word for community, signifying unity and togetherness. Often it is the case when people are in a liminal state, they have a sense of communitas forms, born from their homogeneity of being away from standard social rules. Coney Island, discussed in John F. Kasson's Amusing the Million, was a location at the turn of the nineteenth century which foreshadowed the changes of morals and social interactions which would become more prominent in the 1920s. Coney Island fits into Victor Turner's ideas on liminality and communitas through its necessary escapism from the profane, working world, and through uniting all the visitors, turning socio-economic structures inside out.
Coney Island's amusement parts created a liminal world for the working class Americans of the time, allowing for them to break away from the real world and experience fun and play. A park filled with ride, shows, games, and excitement for all let people fall free from their worries and lose themselves in the entertainment which the island provided them. As the racy and colorful postcards exhibit of the visitors, " in arriving at the resort they crossed a critical threshold, entering a world apart from ordinary life, prevailing social structures and positions" (41). There was no distinction between classes because the people were all dressed similarly, with fashion not daring to give away a hint as to the wearer's background. The park created this atmosphere which removed itself from the city life, and shedding the rules of society within the walls. Dwarfs, distorted bodies, odd talents now became the highlight of the Coney Island world where the people would be mocked for their deformities any where else in the New York City area. The island created a fun, playful world, providing the working class a break on the weekends to allow them to return back to their structured worlds and provide this liminal vacation to make their monotonous work life more bearable.
In this world of liminality, Coney Island creates a sense of communitas among its participants which defies the racial and class tensions seen in the city. By breaking free of reality, the people join together and are bound together in their escape from society. No rules exist; the people create their own social rules in the parks which would be scorned outside anywhere else. In Coney Island the visitors "display a sense of solidarity and mutual pleasure in the release of social restraints" (46). Everyone has broken free of all city ties at the parks and beaches, and are united in their ability to drop their biases and enjoy the company of everyone. Ethnicities intermingle, the upper class interacts with citizens of the lower class, and the outcasts are accepted in this fun-filled society. Amusement and fun unites the people of New York City and abroad in a world which defies socio-economical ties. In this liminal state, Coney Island creates an atmosphere in which the people who support a stronger communitas than the one outside the walls of the park.
Coney Island and other parks and attractions like it brought fun and entertainment into the lives of the middle class workers and stripped the people of their biases and misconceptions of other classes and ethnicities. Men and women could show public displays of affection, the poor were allowed to ride the same rides as the rich, and the shunned citizens of society were suddenly on top of the world. In this liminal threshold on Coney Island, communitas is reached as it is produced no other place outside the walls of Luna Park and Dreamland.
After this first reading in Amusing the Million, one of the questions I have about the entire setting is about why people allowed these breaks in social morals to occur. In today's society, it is a given that amusements parks contain certain attractions, but why is it that these new ideas were accepted by the people? I think reading about some oppositions to the events at Coney Island would be helpful in gaining a more accurate picture of the location.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Tenants Speak
During the 19th century, the focus on improving the lives of the tenants were laid in improving the designs of the tenement houses. They held competitions to see who could come up with the best design and tried to make changes to improve the health and sanitation of the residents. However, as discussed in class, the root issue of reforming the tenements lay not in the renovation of the buildings themselves but in raising the wages of the tenants.
The entire New York Society was attacking the tenement problem from the wrong angle every single time. They were hoping that instilling change in the buildings people occupied would instill change in the occupants of those buildings. They were working on hygiene and sanitation in schools as children, for when asked what they needed to do to stay healthy they replied "I must keep my skin clean,Wear clean clothes, Breathe pure air, And live in the sunlight." Perhaps cleaner people and a cleaner environment would help the poor people rise from rags to riches and prosper in society, living the American Dream. Last I knew, although cleanliness will make a person appear more presentable to the public, such as when Ragged Dick cleaned up his clothes and washed, it doesn't mean that food will now magically be on the peoples' plates and the rent will suddenly become manageable. Their jobs remain the same, their wages remain the same, and their social and economic status still remains at the bottom.
Reformers like Jacob Riis, had other ideas as to how to eliminate poverty from the city which included renovating or rebuilding the houses in which the people lived. Riis suggests that the three effective ways in dealing with this include "by law, by remodeling and making the most out of the old houses, [and] by building new, model tenements" (Riis, 223). New plumbing would be nice, because without it "you had to go down to the yard, and the toilets were in the yard" (Sigrist). Also, if air and light could reach all corners of rooms, that would provide people with in essence more hope by lightening the atmosphere in the home. However, new innovations and inventions placed in the tenements would increase the cost of the housing and the poor people whose home's they were supposed to belong to couldn't afford it. Why? Because their occupational wages were too low to support themselves and family.
By making minimum wage a law in the United States, this would increase the amount of money that the poverty stricken people earned, allowing them to afford better housing and giving themselves better quality lives. The poor weren't poor because the tenements made them poor. The poor were poor because their wages made them poor, with tenement housing being the only home they could afford to have. Sanitation in an area where disease spread was inevitable, cleanliness and plumbing in an area where the drinking, washing, and bathroom water were all too close, and education in an area of ignorance would all be beneficial to the poor residents in New York City, however they wouldn't be forward progress in improving their poverty status. The focus of the reformation of the time should have been on the wages of the tenants and not on the tenement buildings themselves. Changing the appearance of a living space won't change the quality of the living space.
My question of the reformation is when did the tenement housing stop? I know some of the buildings are still around and used today, but there aren't a lot of people living in these kinds of conditions in the city today? What happened to the people and the tenements they called home?
The entire New York Society was attacking the tenement problem from the wrong angle every single time. They were hoping that instilling change in the buildings people occupied would instill change in the occupants of those buildings. They were working on hygiene and sanitation in schools as children, for when asked what they needed to do to stay healthy they replied "I must keep my skin clean,Wear clean clothes, Breathe pure air, And live in the sunlight." Perhaps cleaner people and a cleaner environment would help the poor people rise from rags to riches and prosper in society, living the American Dream. Last I knew, although cleanliness will make a person appear more presentable to the public, such as when Ragged Dick cleaned up his clothes and washed, it doesn't mean that food will now magically be on the peoples' plates and the rent will suddenly become manageable. Their jobs remain the same, their wages remain the same, and their social and economic status still remains at the bottom.
Reformers like Jacob Riis, had other ideas as to how to eliminate poverty from the city which included renovating or rebuilding the houses in which the people lived. Riis suggests that the three effective ways in dealing with this include "by law, by remodeling and making the most out of the old houses, [and] by building new, model tenements" (Riis, 223). New plumbing would be nice, because without it "you had to go down to the yard, and the toilets were in the yard" (Sigrist). Also, if air and light could reach all corners of rooms, that would provide people with in essence more hope by lightening the atmosphere in the home. However, new innovations and inventions placed in the tenements would increase the cost of the housing and the poor people whose home's they were supposed to belong to couldn't afford it. Why? Because their occupational wages were too low to support themselves and family.
By making minimum wage a law in the United States, this would increase the amount of money that the poverty stricken people earned, allowing them to afford better housing and giving themselves better quality lives. The poor weren't poor because the tenements made them poor. The poor were poor because their wages made them poor, with tenement housing being the only home they could afford to have. Sanitation in an area where disease spread was inevitable, cleanliness and plumbing in an area where the drinking, washing, and bathroom water were all too close, and education in an area of ignorance would all be beneficial to the poor residents in New York City, however they wouldn't be forward progress in improving their poverty status. The focus of the reformation of the time should have been on the wages of the tenants and not on the tenement buildings themselves. Changing the appearance of a living space won't change the quality of the living space.
My question of the reformation is when did the tenement housing stop? I know some of the buildings are still around and used today, but there aren't a lot of people living in these kinds of conditions in the city today? What happened to the people and the tenements they called home?
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Ethnicity in the Tenements
Jacob Riis wrote the book How the Other Half Lives to educate his audience of middle and upper classmen on the desperate situation of the tenants of the lower, poor class. He wanted to instill a sense of change and inspire action to his readers. However, was Riis really advocating for change for all people of all nationality, race, and ethnicity in the city of New York. Due to racism at the time, ethnicity of the tenement residents would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed.
Beginning with the Chinese, Riis demonstrates present racism towards this group of citizens in New York City, highlighting their lack of aptitude to change and inability to integrate and Americanize. Riis mentions the Chinese' absence of passion when talking about their conversion to Christianity because "he lacks the handle of a strong faith in something, anything" (77). A lack of faith in religion or in anything which the Americans value in society suggests their inability to be transformed and reformed in any means to be helped out financially and thus socially. Also, their differing morals clash with those of the upper class citizens, who find it baffling that "he was angry" at police interference when a Chinese man was beating up his wife (82). The Chinese' failure to Americanize into society and their seeming lack of passion to anything in American values suggests to the audience that reform effort or help need not be offered to these people because they are essentially helpless. They shouldn't be helped because they don't want to be helped. They would rather stay in the bottom than improve their status, in sense giving the upperclassmen the cold shoulder and ignoring any help the government may have to offer. The Chinese racism of how Riis and his audience portrayed this group would influence whether people would want to put in effort to reform the area.
The Jewish community was seen as very odd and dirty, and whether the ability of the people to integrate into upper levels of society were questioned. The dress of the Jews was "queer" and "outlandish" and the robe didn't just demonstrate or exhibit the religion of the people but "betrayed" the race to passersby on the street (85). The chosen adjectives used by Riis to describe the people of the Jewish community clearly show how they weren't favored by society and thus weren't the priority of the city to come to the aid of. Also, Riis mentions that "typhus fever and small-pox are bred" in the housings of the the Jewish people (88). The upper class citizens were terrified that living closer to these kinds of disease centers would increase their affinity to contract the disease. Why would they want to help the people who only caused huge outbreaks of deadly diseases. While it was more likely the close living quarters were the reason for the high numbers of people who would sub come to typhus and cholera, they people still believed it was these foreigners who brought the sicknesses with them. The oddities of the city and the sickly were not priorities in the push towards reform of the tenements. The discrimination of the Jews would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed or not.
While Jacob Riis' book was revolutionary in bringing the life in the tenements to light to the literate public, it placed the spot light of reform on certain areas of town more so than others instead of incorporating the entire city as one and looking at the lower class as equal. The negative views of the Chinese and Jews specifically shows how the worth of investing help in these groups doesn't appear as if it will be very high.
The question I have about this topic is on whether Riis himself was actually racist towards certain groups and nationalities or was he only writing what his audience would want to hear. Was he putting down other ethnicities because he believed in the discriminatory words he used or was he trying to appeal to the upper class and feed into their beliefs.
Beginning with the Chinese, Riis demonstrates present racism towards this group of citizens in New York City, highlighting their lack of aptitude to change and inability to integrate and Americanize. Riis mentions the Chinese' absence of passion when talking about their conversion to Christianity because "he lacks the handle of a strong faith in something, anything" (77). A lack of faith in religion or in anything which the Americans value in society suggests their inability to be transformed and reformed in any means to be helped out financially and thus socially. Also, their differing morals clash with those of the upper class citizens, who find it baffling that "he was angry" at police interference when a Chinese man was beating up his wife (82). The Chinese' failure to Americanize into society and their seeming lack of passion to anything in American values suggests to the audience that reform effort or help need not be offered to these people because they are essentially helpless. They shouldn't be helped because they don't want to be helped. They would rather stay in the bottom than improve their status, in sense giving the upperclassmen the cold shoulder and ignoring any help the government may have to offer. The Chinese racism of how Riis and his audience portrayed this group would influence whether people would want to put in effort to reform the area.
The Jewish community was seen as very odd and dirty, and whether the ability of the people to integrate into upper levels of society were questioned. The dress of the Jews was "queer" and "outlandish" and the robe didn't just demonstrate or exhibit the religion of the people but "betrayed" the race to passersby on the street (85). The chosen adjectives used by Riis to describe the people of the Jewish community clearly show how they weren't favored by society and thus weren't the priority of the city to come to the aid of. Also, Riis mentions that "typhus fever and small-pox are bred" in the housings of the the Jewish people (88). The upper class citizens were terrified that living closer to these kinds of disease centers would increase their affinity to contract the disease. Why would they want to help the people who only caused huge outbreaks of deadly diseases. While it was more likely the close living quarters were the reason for the high numbers of people who would sub come to typhus and cholera, they people still believed it was these foreigners who brought the sicknesses with them. The oddities of the city and the sickly were not priorities in the push towards reform of the tenements. The discrimination of the Jews would effect whether the people of the city felt the area should be reformed or not.
While Jacob Riis' book was revolutionary in bringing the life in the tenements to light to the literate public, it placed the spot light of reform on certain areas of town more so than others instead of incorporating the entire city as one and looking at the lower class as equal. The negative views of the Chinese and Jews specifically shows how the worth of investing help in these groups doesn't appear as if it will be very high.
The question I have about this topic is on whether Riis himself was actually racist towards certain groups and nationalities or was he only writing what his audience would want to hear. Was he putting down other ethnicities because he believed in the discriminatory words he used or was he trying to appeal to the upper class and feed into their beliefs.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
"The Mirror with a Memory"
Jacob Riis' work is said by some to have created some of the most objective photographs in history to the primitive state of photography as well as the lack of any development of an artistic style in the field. Also, Riis was not using to photographs as his argument but using them as a supplement to his worded claims. The camera had no countless number of settings because just taking the picture was an entire process itself. However, I believe that the innovation of photography created biased photographs of the tenants in Jacob Riis' book How the Other Half Lives.
The expressions of some of the subjects are altered due to their curiosity and admiration of the camera. Riis was one of the first people to travel into the tenements are photograph the residents as they were, meaning that it may well have been the first time those people were getting their picture taken let alone seeing a camera up close. The camera created emotions of uncertainty in the new technology, reflected in the expressions of the people whom he was photographing. In Riis' photograph "Bohemian cigar makers at work in their tenement," the young boy continues his hand work in the picture "although the young boy cannot keep his eyes off the camera" (218). The workers are caught in their environment, however the expressions of the subject, his awe and uncertainty with the invention, adds to a biased tint on the photograph. The obvious interest in the apparatus taking their picture changes the expressions on the subjects' faces, making the photographs free of biases in attempting to catch the tenants in their absolute natural environments.
If Riis was trying to or not, his inclusion or exclusion of photographs and the objects in them creates proclivity. Riis took many many photographs of the tenement housing and its guests, but he could only implement a fraction of them in his finished works. This new technology allowed for the mass production of such pictures. His choosing of which photographs to put in his book is biased because the reader doesn't know what the other hundreds of prints looked like or what those portrayed. Perhaps they were all similar to the ones which appeared in the novel. Maybe a few showed happiness and joy in the expressions of the subjects, indicating that the lower class still held hope and it wasn't the middle class' duty to save the rest of the population in poverty. Also, although Riis attempted to photograph things as they were and show the world the poor life with no strings attached, while taking the photograph, he could only include so much. Whether he focused on a person or their surroundings, this act of changing the field of view created biases based on what the author was and wasn't willing to include in his work. The exclusion and inclusion of various details both in the field of view as well as which prints were used created biases in the work of Riis.
Riis wanted to show readers the lives of the poor without changing any of the environment to bring to readers the truth about the lives of not only the other half, but the lives of the majority of the citizens of the city. He did a very good job at showing the middle and upper class people just how the people living near the Five Points lived. However, no matter how close to the truth Riis wanted to come, he couldn't capture all of it. The modernity of photography created bias photographs in How the Other Half Lives in terms of the subjects' expressions as well as the inclusion and exclusion of certain details.
The expressions of some of the subjects are altered due to their curiosity and admiration of the camera. Riis was one of the first people to travel into the tenements are photograph the residents as they were, meaning that it may well have been the first time those people were getting their picture taken let alone seeing a camera up close. The camera created emotions of uncertainty in the new technology, reflected in the expressions of the people whom he was photographing. In Riis' photograph "Bohemian cigar makers at work in their tenement," the young boy continues his hand work in the picture "although the young boy cannot keep his eyes off the camera" (218). The workers are caught in their environment, however the expressions of the subject, his awe and uncertainty with the invention, adds to a biased tint on the photograph. The obvious interest in the apparatus taking their picture changes the expressions on the subjects' faces, making the photographs free of biases in attempting to catch the tenants in their absolute natural environments.
If Riis was trying to or not, his inclusion or exclusion of photographs and the objects in them creates proclivity. Riis took many many photographs of the tenement housing and its guests, but he could only implement a fraction of them in his finished works. This new technology allowed for the mass production of such pictures. His choosing of which photographs to put in his book is biased because the reader doesn't know what the other hundreds of prints looked like or what those portrayed. Perhaps they were all similar to the ones which appeared in the novel. Maybe a few showed happiness and joy in the expressions of the subjects, indicating that the lower class still held hope and it wasn't the middle class' duty to save the rest of the population in poverty. Also, although Riis attempted to photograph things as they were and show the world the poor life with no strings attached, while taking the photograph, he could only include so much. Whether he focused on a person or their surroundings, this act of changing the field of view created biases based on what the author was and wasn't willing to include in his work. The exclusion and inclusion of various details both in the field of view as well as which prints were used created biases in the work of Riis.
Riis wanted to show readers the lives of the poor without changing any of the environment to bring to readers the truth about the lives of not only the other half, but the lives of the majority of the citizens of the city. He did a very good job at showing the middle and upper class people just how the people living near the Five Points lived. However, no matter how close to the truth Riis wanted to come, he couldn't capture all of it. The modernity of photography created bias photographs in How the Other Half Lives in terms of the subjects' expressions as well as the inclusion and exclusion of certain details.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Introduction to the Tenements
How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis enlightened the higher class citizens on the standard of living that the other half, or more like the other three quarters, of the city lived in. Riis' work was evolutionary due to his inccorporation of photography to support and bring more life to his journalistic writing style. People can disregard words and stories as false exaggerations of the truth, but "if half the country tried to ignore how the other half lived, let them ignore photographs" such as Riis produced for his tale (vii). His first publishings couldn't reprint the pictures he wanted to include, detracting from the reality of the stories which the pictures tell. A drawing, no matter the ability of the artist, will be biased, unable to portray the exact unsanitary, filthy, and wretched living quarters which the people lived in. To get a better sense of the mess which the people of the time lived in, I thought I would compare my dorm room at it's worse to the best of the tenements in order to help myself realize how far the nation has come in terms of living quarters.
My dorm room at it's best:
Compared to average tenement housing:
The first obvious difference between these two photographs is the incorporation of color. True, color film had yet to be invented seeing as the first black and white photograph had only made its newspaper debut in 1873 compared to the publishing of Riis' book in 1890 (vii). However, even if the photograph of the tenement housing had been in color, I doubt the bed sheet would have been a magenta and orange combination, and had there been posters on the wall, they most definitely would have been a poster advocating for vacation and an endless summer.
Dorm life is the first experience I have ever had sharing my sleeping area with another person; at home everyone has their own bedroom with a spare one for guests. In tenement housing, not only are the residents sharing their entire sleeping area with their entire family, but their sleeping space is also their kitchen, their living room and their dining room and their bathroom is the alleyway in the back of their housing building. I can adjust the amount of light which enters the room with the tug of a shade, but in tenement housing "large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation" (5). The people lived in a world of darkness both physically in the dreary depths of their tenement home and mentally in the ignorance of their lack of resources to receive an education. Here my roommate and I are at Stonehill paying around fifteen thousand dollars to room at the school in addition to the rooms we have at home, and the people of the tenements were struggling to provide five cents to afford the space which they called home.
The next thing which caught my eye in comparison of the two photographs was the difference in the messes of my side of the dorm room and the messes found in and around the tenement housing. My mess consists of sweatshirts, books and other articles of clothes I accumulate on my floor during a busy school week. People of the tenement have no such commodities to make any disarray with. Their messes consist of people's garbage strewn about the streets (3), the rubble of old buildings and decaying homes (7), and the dirt which the people wear on their clothes and faces with no means to wash it off (35), symbolizing their poverty status in the city.
A last differing feature between the two rooms is the idea of sanitation and safety. My laundry basket holds my disgusting sweaty clothes which I have worn once and must wash before I wear them again. I don't even know if the tenants even did laundry, let alone how many times they wore an outfit before they deemed it too dirty to go out in public with. However, with dirt as a common accessory, virtually anything would look fashionable at the Five Points. A couple weeks ago there were about ten people in my hallway who got a cold and spread the germs due to the closeness of the living quarters. Everyone took some NyQuil and recovered in a week. In the tenement housing, someone might get cholera and pass it on to others due to close living quarters. One of the children from each family might die, and everyone would hope that they wouldn't get it. If you open my dorm door, directly to the right is the fire exit, which sets off an alarm if anyone pushes it open. In the tenement housing, while trying to rescue residents of a building "the firemen had to look twice before they could find the opening that passes for a thoroughfare; a stout man would never venture in" (36). The owners were more interested in the profits of the business than the safety of those who provided their income. Luckily for me, Stonehill College is more concerned with my safety than the amount of occupants they can place in O'hara Hall.
The question I still have about the tenement housing is how was this problem fixed? I know that reforms were taken to improve specific aspects such as lighting and sanitation, but hos was tenement housing eliminated and better lives established for the majority of the citizens of New York City?
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Post Ragged Dick Readings
As cliche as the phrase is, a picture sometimes really is worth a thousand words. A photograph provides the audience with a more tangible source than letters arranged in disarray on a sheet of paper. While Ragged Dick and other primary sources from the Gilded Age are telling stories, they fail to capture the essence of the destitute poverty infecting New York City and account for its growing population of street arabs. Throw as many statistics at someone as you may please, however the mind is incapable of fathoming the extent of numbers and the importance they embody in contrast to the emotions which pictures can flood an individual with. Certain events in history, such as the stories of the poor in the late 19th century are best told not in words, but in film.
Although Ragged Dick is a tale of the rise from rags to riches, the life of Dick while he is in rags is almost glorified; the times appear rough, as indeed they are, but his consistent, merry attitude and perseverance can shadow the truth behind his situation. Words just can't do the time period justice. While describing the sleeping situations of the young vagabonds, "to sleep in boxes, or under stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter nights," definitely appears horrible to the audience, a reader will most likely be more indifferent to the passage, forgetting about it ten minutes later as they saunter off to participate in social aspects of their lives ("Homeless Boys," 143). However, seeing a photograph such as those which are in the edited version of Ragged Dick from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half lives, hits closer to home to the audience.
The above photograph speaks to me tenfold compared to reading about the corners and alleyways that the street children slept in (photograph from How the Other Half Lives). Actually seeing photographs of real children sleeping in a doorway on a metal grate will stick in my mind far longer than words describing the same situation will. Seeing living human beings suffering evokes empathy in the audience because witnessing the horrible situation makes it more real, more tangible and the reader is forced to believe that young children were necessitated to live in such desolate manners.
The supplemental reading to accompany Ragged Dick, "Street-Rats and Gutter Snipes," tries to provide readers with statistics on the age, gender, and nationality of a specific group of pick pocketers in New York City. Charts, like that one on page 28 illustrating the age of the thieves, do provide solid information on the statistics of the past, but charts and graphs and words alone don't do history justice. The mind can't fathom and process the number of kids actually left to fend for themselves and each other on the streets, just as humans can't comprehend the number of casualties from a war. We can read the number 20,000 or 3,000,000 and know that both are big numbers, but when we see hundreds of pictures of different kids roaming the streets of New York alone or we see a picture of hundreds of bodies piled in a mass grave, suddenly that large number becomes alive and we are humbled by it's truth and enormity. The incorporation of photographs in historical events makes the events which are occurring all over the world so much more intimate and tangible to the audience, and can speak many more silent messages to the onlooker than any essay or novel can.
Although Ragged Dick is a tale of the rise from rags to riches, the life of Dick while he is in rags is almost glorified; the times appear rough, as indeed they are, but his consistent, merry attitude and perseverance can shadow the truth behind his situation. Words just can't do the time period justice. While describing the sleeping situations of the young vagabonds, "to sleep in boxes, or under stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter nights," definitely appears horrible to the audience, a reader will most likely be more indifferent to the passage, forgetting about it ten minutes later as they saunter off to participate in social aspects of their lives ("Homeless Boys," 143). However, seeing a photograph such as those which are in the edited version of Ragged Dick from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half lives, hits closer to home to the audience.
The supplemental reading to accompany Ragged Dick, "Street-Rats and Gutter Snipes," tries to provide readers with statistics on the age, gender, and nationality of a specific group of pick pocketers in New York City. Charts, like that one on page 28 illustrating the age of the thieves, do provide solid information on the statistics of the past, but charts and graphs and words alone don't do history justice. The mind can't fathom and process the number of kids actually left to fend for themselves and each other on the streets, just as humans can't comprehend the number of casualties from a war. We can read the number 20,000 or 3,000,000 and know that both are big numbers, but when we see hundreds of pictures of different kids roaming the streets of New York alone or we see a picture of hundreds of bodies piled in a mass grave, suddenly that large number becomes alive and we are humbled by it's truth and enormity. The incorporation of photographs in historical events makes the events which are occurring all over the world so much more intimate and tangible to the audience, and can speak many more silent messages to the onlooker than any essay or novel can.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Ragged Dick (Chapters 12-27)
Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, Jr. is the classic tail of rags to riches, presenting the idea that if someone is determined enough, motivated, and given some encouragement, they can rise from the unsanitary life of poverty to a lifestyle where such basics as food and shelter can be provided for. The majority of the audience reading this story in the 19th century would have been either the middle or upper classes, being as the lower classes held no education and were thus illiterate. In some ways it provided false advertisement of the poverty stricken citizens, giving them the impression that all poor people were as charismatic as the story's hero, Ragged Dick. The story can give inspiration to the lower classes, and to all of the nation's citizens of the time it stresses the idea that education if the key to earning a better living.
Opportunities to improve both socially and economically aren't handed out to anyone. Work needs to be accomplished to achieve greater status, and placing this labor in studies is the key to living more comfortably. With encouragement from a compassionate stranger and a few dollars to get him started, Dick is enlightened with the idea that through education and books, he can leave his occupation of a boot-black behind and become something more. Dick drops his bad habits of gambling and going to the Old Bowery to see plays and instead opens a bank account and spends his evenings expanding his knowledge through the help of his friend, Fosdick. When an ignorant man asks the boys how they spend their evenings, he is astounded at their response that they "spend [their] evenings in study" (93). He is naive to the heights which a higher education can bring someone and the money which studying saves from wasting it on drinking, gambling, and other such fruitful things, bringing happiness for a short moment in contrast to the lasting happiness which education can provide to both a person's mind and spirit. The act of learning requires the learner to reflect on their morals and their "constitution" as Dick phrases it, as well as paving the pathway towards better standards of living.
With the rise of the industrial revolution, factories began replacing the jobs which had once required skilled workers to perform. Because of this loss of craftsmanship, in order to obtain a job which had a decent, steady pay, education was the the window of opportunity to achieve a higher status in the changing economy. Anyone could black boots or fill a space in the mundane factory, along with other simple jobs, but it took a greater mental capacity to obtain a steady paying job and move up the economic and thus social class ladder. When Dick saves a man's son from drowning, the man feels indebted to him and offers the young boy a job. The man offers Dick a clerk position asking " I suppose you know something of arithmetic, do you not?" (113). A year past, Dick would have had to answered no to this question, however with help from a kind friend as well as a constant motivation, Dick could proudly answer that yes he did know some basic mathematics. Similarly to the world today, the higher education a person could achieve and afford, the better his occupational situation would be. With a standard basis of knowledge in reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, Dick was able to secure a job which will aid in his elevation to a better lifestyle. Alger demonstrates to his entire audience that education is a very important aspect of every one's life, regardless to their class, if they wish to make something of themselves in the world.
One question I would have after reading this book would be about the reactions of the upper and middle class citizens who did read this book son after it was published, therefore more in context to their lives. I would like to know whether this helped to educate other people on the real lives of the impoverished or whether it provided false information in terms of the characteristics and personalities of the poor as well as possibly providing an unrealistic view of the idea of rising from rags to riches.
Opportunities to improve both socially and economically aren't handed out to anyone. Work needs to be accomplished to achieve greater status, and placing this labor in studies is the key to living more comfortably. With encouragement from a compassionate stranger and a few dollars to get him started, Dick is enlightened with the idea that through education and books, he can leave his occupation of a boot-black behind and become something more. Dick drops his bad habits of gambling and going to the Old Bowery to see plays and instead opens a bank account and spends his evenings expanding his knowledge through the help of his friend, Fosdick. When an ignorant man asks the boys how they spend their evenings, he is astounded at their response that they "spend [their] evenings in study" (93). He is naive to the heights which a higher education can bring someone and the money which studying saves from wasting it on drinking, gambling, and other such fruitful things, bringing happiness for a short moment in contrast to the lasting happiness which education can provide to both a person's mind and spirit. The act of learning requires the learner to reflect on their morals and their "constitution" as Dick phrases it, as well as paving the pathway towards better standards of living.
With the rise of the industrial revolution, factories began replacing the jobs which had once required skilled workers to perform. Because of this loss of craftsmanship, in order to obtain a job which had a decent, steady pay, education was the the window of opportunity to achieve a higher status in the changing economy. Anyone could black boots or fill a space in the mundane factory, along with other simple jobs, but it took a greater mental capacity to obtain a steady paying job and move up the economic and thus social class ladder. When Dick saves a man's son from drowning, the man feels indebted to him and offers the young boy a job. The man offers Dick a clerk position asking " I suppose you know something of arithmetic, do you not?" (113). A year past, Dick would have had to answered no to this question, however with help from a kind friend as well as a constant motivation, Dick could proudly answer that yes he did know some basic mathematics. Similarly to the world today, the higher education a person could achieve and afford, the better his occupational situation would be. With a standard basis of knowledge in reading, writing, science, and arithmetic, Dick was able to secure a job which will aid in his elevation to a better lifestyle. Alger demonstrates to his entire audience that education is a very important aspect of every one's life, regardless to their class, if they wish to make something of themselves in the world.
One question I would have after reading this book would be about the reactions of the upper and middle class citizens who did read this book son after it was published, therefore more in context to their lives. I would like to know whether this helped to educate other people on the real lives of the impoverished or whether it provided false information in terms of the characteristics and personalities of the poor as well as possibly providing an unrealistic view of the idea of rising from rags to riches.
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