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
That night, Dobie arrives home to find Kracha mending his shoes on the side porch. He has plans to visit Dorta, who still lives in the First Ward, and he urges Dobie to come with him. When they arrive in the Ward, they walk down Washington Street with Dorta. The First Ward has a vacant, worn-out look. Kracha points out the areas where various shops had been, including the ruin where Wold’s saloon once stood. “I bet you wish you had half the money you spent in the saloon that used to be here,” Dobie teases. Kracha and Dorta comment on the poverty and ruin that now defines the First Ward. “The world had been here for a while, crowded, busy, full of life; and then had moved on.”
The destructive tendencies of American industrialization are on full display in this passage. Changes in the economic cycle have taken a toll on the once-bustling First Ward, leaving it a poverty-ridden shell of its former self. Those who could afford to leave the neighborhood did, while those who could not stayed behind to endure the process of decay.
Themes
As Dorta and Kracha’s conversation turns toward the First Ward’s current, mostly black residents, their voices fill with scorn. “It's too bad the niggers had to come,” Dorta says, “the men are always getting drunk and fighting, and you hear women screaming during the night. They all live together like so many animals. And so dirty!” Dobie interjects that the black residents are poor, and he points out the hypocrisy of Slovaks accusing black people of the very same vices that the Irish once leveled at Slovaks.
In this passage, Bell reveals how the destruction waged by American industrialization actually helps to stoke divisions among working-class groups that might otherwise join together against the common foe of capital. The older generation quickly forgets the prejudice they endured when the opportunity arises to spread prejudice of their own—they even use slurs to refer to the black community, just as slurs were once used against them. Unable to exact any concessions from the steel company over the decades, Kracha and Dorta seek solace in degrading black people just as the English and Irish once degraded Slovaks and the company continues to degrade all workers.
Themes
When they arrive at Dorta’s house, she and Kracha tell Dobie and Julie about how life was in the good old days of the First Ward, and Dobie tells them of his setbacks with the union and the mass exodus of members over the summer. Dorta informs Dobie that his father, Mike, had always been in favor of unions. “He was never one for keeping quiet,” she states, “but he used to say, If I don't speak out it will poison me.” Dobie leaves Dorta’s with even more admiration for his father.
Having known little about his father’s political opinions, Dobie is pleased to learn that Mike favored unions, even in an era when unions appeared to be a lost cause. That Dobie is making real what Mike only dreamed of embodies a key element that brings the American Dram to life in Bell’s novel: the process by which members of one generation fulfill the wishes of their predecessors.
Themes
