The Jungle: Chapters 15–21

"How do you mean?" he asked, in perplexity.

It made a choking in Jurgis' throat to hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than before: "Stop it, I say!"

What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny of the past, of the thing that had happened and could not be recalled, of the memory that could never be effaced!

Instead of falling silent at the end, the bell broke into a sudden clangor.

All life had turned to rottenness and stench in them—love was a beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was an imprecation.

They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

He saw that Ona was not with them, and was full of foreboding as to what that might mean.

Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed.

Every few blocks there would be a railroad crossing on the level with the sidewalk, a deathtrap for the unwary; long freight trains would be passing, the cars clanking and crashing together, and Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up with a fever of impatience.

Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt started to walk.

He shoveled black sand into an iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden; then it would be taken out, and molten iron poured into it.

Jurgis stood where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it—one had to shout to be heard in the place.

Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue, red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white, ineffable.

Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him; he had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed—only shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon life.

Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgis to make out, Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then he would remember it, prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with other stories in an irresistible fashion.