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.
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.
