The jungle: the uncensored original edition by Upton Sinclair

Author:Upton Sinclair [Sinclair, Upton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Political Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781884365300
Publisher: See Sharp Press
Published: 2003-03-14T06:00:00+00:00

“Go on!” said the boy.

“You—” Jurgis tried again. “What do you want here?” “Me?” answered the boy, angrily. “I live here.” “You live here!” Jurgis panted. He turned white and clung

more tightly to the railing. “You live here! Then where’s my family?”

The boy looked surprised. “Your family!” he echoed.

And Jurgis started toward him. “I—this is my house!” he cried.

“Come off!” said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened, and he called: “Hey, ma! Here’s a fellow says he owns this house.”

A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. “What’s that?” she demanded.

Jurgis turned toward her. “Where is my family?” he cried, wildly. “I left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?”

The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought she was dealing with a maniac—Jurgis looked like one. “Your home!” she echoed.

“My home!” he half shrieked. “I lived here, I tell you.”

“You must be mistaken,” she answered him. “No one ever lived here. This is a new house. They told us so. They—”

“What have they done with my family?” shouted Jurgis, frantically.

A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts of what “they” had told her. “I don’t know where your family is,” she said. “I bought the house only three days ago, and there was nobody here, and they told me

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it was all new. Do you really mean you had ever rented it?” “Rented it!” panted Jurgis. “I bought it! I paid for it! I

own it! And they—my God, can’t you tell me where my people

went?”

She made him understand at last that she knew nothing.

Jurgis’ brain was so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his family had been wiped out of existence;

as if they were proving to be dream people, who never had

existed at all. He was quite lost—but then suddenly he

thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next

block. She would know! He turned and started at a run. Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She

cried out when she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes,

yes, she could tell him. The family had moved; they had not

been able to pay the rent and they had been turned out into

the snow, and the house had been repainted and sold again

the next week. No, she had not heard how they were, but she

could tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene,

with whom they had stayed when they first came to the yards.

Wouldn’t Jurgis come in and rest? It was certainly too bad—

if only he had not got into jail—

And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go

very far round the corner he gave out completely, and sat

down on the steps of a saloon, and hid his face in his hands,

and shook all over with dry, racking sobs.

Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage, overwhelmed him—what was any imagination of the thing to this heartbreaking, crushing reality of it—to the

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