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
Mike’s badly burned body is brought home, and he is briefly laid in the children’s bedroom upstairs before being buried on a dark, wintry day. Mary cannot imagine going on living without him, but she has no choice. Once all the guests have departed and the funeral has ended, she must cook supper for the children and send them to bed. In the morning, the children have to go to school, and she has to prepare breakfast, and then there is the washing, which she can put off no longer. The company gives her a check for $1300, although Mike’s brother, Joe, believes she should have gotten more. Mike’s lodge also gives her $500, which she uses to cover the funeral expenses.
The loss of Mike leaves Mary alone with four children and no time to grieve her husband’s loss. The demands of women’s work are such that grieving is a luxury Mary cannot afford, just as she cannot afford the loss of Mike’s income. Even the money she receives from the company and from Mike’s lodge must go towards paying for his death. Thus, Bell suggests that a death happens in stages, with the demise of an actual body merely representing the first step in the process.
Themes
Mary soon moves, “unable to remain in rooms that had known Mike's living presence.” She gives his clothes to strangers, and, while sifting through her closet, she finds his overcoat with the button she had sewn on for him just before he died. Unable to contain her sadness any longer, she breaks down, as “grief had its way with her and left her empty.”
The death of a steelworker has far-reaching reverberations for his family that last indefinitely. In contrast to the steel company, which sees Mike’s death as a mere loss of labor, Mary’s see Mike’s death as a loss of the life she once knew.
Themes
The narrative skips ahead to the year 1914, and Mary now lives near Anna, whose closeness to her is a comfort. Her quarters now consist of two rooms in a larger house full of children and boarders. The house is cozy but very old and impossible to heat adequately in the winter. Mary is now just over 30 years old with four children. She has $1000 in the bank and knows how to make dresses and keep an orderly house. “Thus equipped, she [takes] up where Mike left off,” and begins a series of odd jobs that allow her to stay close to home to watch over the children. She washes and sews, and cleans a dentist’s home and office. On days when she is away from home, Anna watches over Mikie and Agnes.
Mary’s circumstances after Mike’s death demonstrate the incredible challenges women in the steel towns face. She is unable to work full time due to the presence of her children, but she is nonetheless expected compensate for the loss of Mike’s wages and his presence as a father. Mary’s persistence in the face of such daunting circumstances is admirable, but Bell also indicates that her fate, like that of so many steelworkers’ wives, is one of needless tragedy.
Themes
Mary soon learns that people’s sympathy for widows is short lived. While no one is unkind to her, they are too preoccupied with “their own problems of living.” Meanwhile, Johnny finds different ways to bring in some money for his mother. The pennies he had always received for collecting junk now go straight to Mary. On Saturdays, he collects wood and hangs around the coal wagons to snag a stray piece, sometimes earning the sympathy of the driver who, if “properly approached,” tosses him shovelfuls to bring home.
Hard work is the defining part of life in Braddock, and Bell indicates that this life makes full-time workers not only of men, but of women and children as well. Mary’s descent into invisible widowhood makes her no less lowly an individual than an unskilled steelworker, while Mike’s death forces young Johnny to prioritize a childhood of work over a childhood of school and play.
Themes
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The second summer after Mike’s death, Johnny gets a job selling newspapers, earning a dime for every 40 papers he sells. On some nights he fails to sell that many, while other nights, he sells more than that. At one point, he also elicits the sympathies of a woman by telling her that his father was killed in the mill, leaving behind four children and their newly widowed mother. The woman buys him lunch and bean soup. In another instance, Johnny witness a boy slash another boy’s bicycle tires. The offender warns Johnny not to tattle on him, and after Johnny vows to hold his tongue, he comes to understand that “what he witnessed was evil, not merely a criminal or heartless thing, but evil itself.” It is a lesson he will take to heart later in life.
Johnny’s experience selling newspapers on the street proves to be a turning point for his character. He learns that work will define his life, and, if he is to have a better life than his father had, he must find a way to make his work pay off more. He begins this process by exploiting a woman’s sympathy for him to score a free lunch. The bike-tire slashing also reveals to Johnny the depth of human cruelty, and that he cannot hope to fight this cruelty by standing idly and observing it happening.
Themes
Dorta, Mary, and Joe are in Mary’s kitchen. The two women discuss their shared curse as widows, and Dorta informs Mary about the dull and cruel normalcy of widowhood in the First Ward. “For a few days everybody is sorry for you; after that you're just another widow,” she says. “There are hundreds of widows. Widows are nothing.” Mary thinks that that “the world has no place for me” because “a widow is outside of everything.”
Mary’s experience as merely one widow among many underscores not only the dismissiveness with which the community views working women, but it also highlights the sheer commonality of suffering in the steel towns. In places where American industry destroys so much, this kind of compassion fatigue is an expected, if no less tragic, reality of life.
Themes
The women discuss Mary’s financial hardships, and Joe suggests that Mary once again consider taking in boarders. Dorta explains that the immigration cycle has changed over the years: fewer men are coming over, and the ones that do either want higher-class accommodations or just board with their relatives. She suggests that Mary remarry, and Joe suggests a widower and former boarder of his named Paul Czudek as a potential suitor. Mary, however, says she is not emotionally ready to take this step, as she believes that Mike was the best man she ever knew. “It takes a long time for the dead to die,” she says.
The invisibility of widows is such that their only real option to regain a certain level of social and economic standing is to remarry. The reality of life in the steel towns often makes actual love an obstacle to basic survival. Mary is still very much in love with Mike, and she cannot bear the thought of remarrying simply for the money.
Themes
