When Dede Antanas can’t find safe work after months of trying, the narrator makes the following comment about a change in Jurgis. The metaphor Sinclair uses depicts Jurgis's wavering faith in the basic goodness of the American people:
So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis' faith in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting a job—and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one evening the old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms of Durham's, and asked what he would pay to get a job.
Jurgis's faith in the inherent goodness of the American people and the American Dream begins to crumble as he experiences the consequences of being exploited by the Beef Trust. The metaphor of faith as a structure that can "crack" and "widen" conveys the fragility of his belief in his own ability to succeed. While it was a “fine structure” before, the disillusionment he feels when faced with circumstances beyond his control begins to wear away at it.
This metaphor points to the disparity between the ideals Jurgis—and eventually, Dede Antanas—held about the American dream and the realities of American life. The widening crack in the younger man’s faith suggests a growing realization that goodness and positive outcomes are not guaranteed consequences of hard work. Jurgis's experience serves as a critique of the injustices of large-scale capitalism, which Sinclair suggests can undermine even the strongest belief in fairness and equality.
Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
The novel establishes its motif of bad weather early, beginning with this dreadful winter in Chicago. The author uses a metaphor of trees being blown and felled by the winter weather. This refers to the winter’s effects on the weakened, impoverished people of Packingtown. The winter’s “raging blasts” rip “weaker branches” from their places and toss them to the ground. In the same way, the winter in Chicago kills off the people that the grueling work and horrible conditions have sickened and harmed. The motif is linked to the theme of the futility of the immigrant population’s struggle against poverty and oppression. It represents their battle against the forces of capitalism that are beyond their control and that persist regardless of their efforts. Like branches in the wind, they are powerless to resist.
The bad weather motif extends beyond physical discomfort. It permeates the characters' lives, infiltrating their homes and worsening their struggles. For example, Jurgis's house is not a refuge from the season:
Home was not a very attractive place—at least not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest weather.
Even Ona and Jurgis’s home is “not a very attractive place” during the bitter winter months. They can’t afford to warm it properly, and so it’s only a partial shelter against their dangerous surroundings.
It’s not just the cold that endangers Sinclair’s characters, however. The summer is just as dangerous and unpleasant as the winter; the narrator tells the reader that “each season had its trials.” In Chapter 10, they explain that in the midsummer sun, the stockyards become "a very purgatory." The cloying heat breeds bacteria and disease in the unventilated rooms, pools of cattle's blood, and badly-constructed streets:
Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them.
The stench of rotting flesh combined with the "plague" of insects that descend on the stockyards is a hellish vision. Here, Sinclair makes one of many biblical allusions in the books to emphasize the horror of the flies. They are a “veritable Egyptian plague,” a reference to the Plagues of Egypt from the Bible. The flies are a "plague" that punish everyone in an area for the sins of the privileged few. Sinclair draws a parallel between this situation—where workers are exploited in awful circumstances—and one from the Old Testament, when the "plagues" Moses unleashed on the world punished the Pharaoh for enslaving the Israelites.
In this excerpt from Chapter 7, Sinclair uses personification and metaphor to depict the cold as an antagonistic force. The cold takes on a character of its own and is personified, which Sinclair adds to by employing metaphors of hell, chaos, and torture:
They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel, iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp, alone, alone.
The cold is personified here as a malevolent villain, deliberately trying to harm all the inhabitants of Packingtown. It is described as "cruel" and malicious, a being with agency. It is so harsh and ever-present that it seems like it wants to kill everyone it's able to touch with its "icy, death-dealing fingers."
The narrator says that the cold is a "grisly thing," a supernatural entity like a “specter” or a “primeval power.” This emphasizes its relentlessness and its might. Rather than just being a condition of the winter weather, it seems to Jurgis and his family like a cruel, “iron-hard” deity. It isn’t indiscriminately awful. Instead, it is deliberate, actively cruel and “grasping.” Indeed, the winter is so bad that even when they’re together, Jurgis and his relations can’t feel any sense of warmth or companionship. They are “alone, alone” in the claws of the freezing nights.
Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
The novel establishes its motif of bad weather early, beginning with this dreadful winter in Chicago. The author uses a metaphor of trees being blown and felled by the winter weather. This refers to the winter’s effects on the weakened, impoverished people of Packingtown. The winter’s “raging blasts” rip “weaker branches” from their places and toss them to the ground. In the same way, the winter in Chicago kills off the people that the grueling work and horrible conditions have sickened and harmed. The motif is linked to the theme of the futility of the immigrant population’s struggle against poverty and oppression. It represents their battle against the forces of capitalism that are beyond their control and that persist regardless of their efforts. Like branches in the wind, they are powerless to resist.
The bad weather motif extends beyond physical discomfort. It permeates the characters' lives, infiltrating their homes and worsening their struggles. For example, Jurgis's house is not a refuge from the season:
Home was not a very attractive place—at least not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest weather.
Even Ona and Jurgis’s home is “not a very attractive place” during the bitter winter months. They can’t afford to warm it properly, and so it’s only a partial shelter against their dangerous surroundings.
It’s not just the cold that endangers Sinclair’s characters, however. The summer is just as dangerous and unpleasant as the winter; the narrator tells the reader that “each season had its trials.” In Chapter 10, they explain that in the midsummer sun, the stockyards become "a very purgatory." The cloying heat breeds bacteria and disease in the unventilated rooms, pools of cattle's blood, and badly-constructed streets:
Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them.
The stench of rotting flesh combined with the "plague" of insects that descend on the stockyards is a hellish vision. Here, Sinclair makes one of many biblical allusions in the books to emphasize the horror of the flies. They are a “veritable Egyptian plague,” a reference to the Plagues of Egypt from the Bible. The flies are a "plague" that punish everyone in an area for the sins of the privileged few. Sinclair draws a parallel between this situation—where workers are exploited in awful circumstances—and one from the Old Testament, when the "plagues" Moses unleashed on the world punished the Pharaoh for enslaving the Israelites.
In this passage, Jurgis's accidental workplace injury leaves him unable to walk, endangering his family's finances. Sinclair uses a metaphor that likens Jurgis’s bitterness to eating in order to describe his misery:
It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily food and drink of Jurgis.
Jurgis's accident overcomes him with bitterness, making regret and impotent fury integral parts of his daily life. What’s worse is that the reader knows it was a preventable disaster. Jurgis is only unable to walk because of how hard he tried to work while badly injured. "No man could help" such a problem from arising, but that doesn't make things any better.
This injustice feels so intense to him that it overshadows all his thoughts, becoming as regular and preoccupying as "daily food and drink." He consumes his “bitterness,” and is consumed by it. This metaphor highlights the magnitude of Jurgis's misfortune. It also points out its far-reaching consequences for his family. The narrator depicts his injury as a devastating event that reshapes Jurgis's daily life, leaving him to repeatedly chew over his failures and disappointments as he's confined to bed.
Sinclair’s use of this metaphor is also particularly poignant in this situation, as food is an absolute priority for the large, hungry family. Jurgis's household is already on the brink of starvation when he’s forced to "eat" this daily bitterness. The diction of food and eating in this metaphor underline the family's lack of real, nourishing meals. The only person who's constantly and reliably "eating" is Jurgis, but his "daily food and drink" are the bitter effects of his own mismanagement and misfortune.
In this passage, the author employs an allusion to Noah's Ark that also serves as a metaphor, depicting the horrific conditions and diverse population of the Chicago jail where Jurgis is imprisoned:
This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime—there were murderers, 'hold-up men' and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, 'shoplifters,' 'confidence men,' petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to.
Describing the jail, Sinclair makes an allusion to "Noah’s ark," a ship that appears in the Bible, built large enough to contain two of every animal in the world. The allusion to the biblical story of Noah's ark serves a dual purpose. It highlights the range of inmates, as the jail contains people who come from various backgrounds and have committed—or are innocent of—a huge array of crimes. Moreover, the way this passage uses the "ark" as a metaphor implies that the jail provides a form of temporary "salvation." Although it's hardly a pleasant place to live, compared to the dangerous streets of wintry Chicago, it's a haven. The OId Testament of the Bible says that Noah’s Ark was built to save the Earth’s animals from being destroyed by a flood that drowned the world. Although the prisoners are trapped in this "ark," they are simultaneously “saved” from potentially dying on the streets in the freezing cold.
