Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Out of This Furnace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration and American Identity
Industrialization and Destruction
The American Dream vs. Reality
Women’s Work
Capital vs. Labor
Summary
Analysis
Dubik’s horrific death weighs heavily on Kracha. A few weeks after the accident, he, Dorta, and Mike are talking in Dorta’s kitchen. Kracha vows to get out of the steel mill, both to escape the possibility of an early death for himself, as well as to escape the piddling wages that keep him trapped there. Dorta comments that Mike and Dubik had long discussed leaving the mill. “What was the use of coming to America if not to live better than we lived in the old country?” Dubik once said.
In this section, Kracha struggles to reconcile the American Dream’s promise that hard work will lead to a better life with the harsh reality of life in the mill. In addition to its horrible working conditions and low pay, the steel mill has also made Kracha’s life infinitely worse by killing his best friend.
Themes
After Kracha lets Dorta talk for a while, he tells her that he wants to purchase Mrs. Miller’s butcher shop. “The way to get rich in America is to go into business,” he states, citing his experience butchering and sausage-making on the railroad as reason to become an entrepreneur. In October 1895, Kracha signs the papers and becomes a butcher shop owner.
Kracha decides that American Dream is still viable if he embraces entrepreneurship, a quintessentially American pursuit.
Themes
