Comparisons Of "The Jungle" And "Our Town"

Alcohol is abused in both The Jungle and Our Town. This affects certain characters negatively. Throughout The Jungle, Jurgis uses alcohol to comfort himself. Also, bars would not sell customers a meal unless they buy a drink first. Jurgis became addicted and spent money that was very valuable to him on alcohol. After Ona dies, Jurgis takes three dollars from Kotrina from when she sold papers and bought whisky at a bar. In chapter 20 after Ona dies the author writes, “Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had been spending their money on drink.”

      In Our Town, Mr. Stimson, the church organist and choirmaster, was addicted to alcohol. Mr. Stimson had battled alcohol for years, but none of the other townspeople tried to help him and ignored his problems. His alcohol addiction eventually led to him committing suicide. In Act II, after Emily relives a day Mr. Stimson says, “That’s what it was to be alive. To move about a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know-that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.” Mr. Stimson probably felt bitter becausenobody helped him with his alcohol problem.

      In both The Jungle and Our Town, characters found that it was until after they lost something that they finally felt that it was truly important.In The Jungle, Jurgis is sentenced a month in prison for attacking Phil Conner. After a month, he returned to his house seeing that it was now owned to a new family, and his family was living in a boarding house because they could not pay their rent. Jurgis and his family worked hard to afford a house, so this causes Jurgis much grief. Another...