"What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no better? My fault? My fault?"
Internet Quotation: "While Davis is accurately recognized as a pioneering realist, she also engaged in an impressive range of other literary styles—including romanticism, folklore, and the gothic—to convey her analyses of American culture." - Sharon M. Harris
Summary: The visit by the Kirby, Mitchell, and the Doctor sparks a moment of perfect clarity and self-awareness in Hugh Wolfe, and after seeing who he is, the grimy, squalid worker stuck in a depressingly cyclical life of work and drink and sleep, he cries out to Deb in despair, questioning humanity, God, life itself. This story serves to illustrate the arbitrary notion of class and the problems of industrialization. Hugh, despite having the inclinations of a masterly sculptor, was born into poverty and remains in poverty. The indolent, apathetic upper-class, on the other hand, was born into money, so money they shall have. Hugh and the story ask why.
The second quotation is from the Rebecca Harding Davis society. I like it because while our subject is almost exclusively known for her realist achievement that is "Life in the Iron Mills," she wrote much more than the lone story and in many different styles. She was an evolving artist, and one who like to play with stylistic traits to accurately portray her ideas on American culture.
My Ideas: It is difficult to find a starting point for this story, given my own sociopolitical views that I find are very nearly perfectly in step with the story's agenda. The struggle of the working class is one that has been an issue since the onset of industrialization, and it remains as much of a problem as ever. Just because this story takes place over 100 years ago, everybody can take something relevant to their lives. Perhaps modern work is concerned with personal computers instead of pig iron, but the questions raised remain the same: what is the point? Why am I subjected to this life?
For Hugh Wolfe does not deserve such a miserable life. Hugh himself is an amiable, patient man; "it was his nature to be kind," says Deb, watching him work from atop a pile of a korl. He is a man with "thin muscles," a lost vigor, and an unpopularity with his fellow workers, making him a textbook case of alienation. The only worthwhile thing Hugh has is his sculpture. Made of surplus korl, he creates chunky forms in a passionate fury, using a blunt knife to sculpt during his breaks from work. When he reaches the final form, he merely breaks them into pieces in "a fit of disappointment." There is in Hugh a creative longing, an escape through artistry that cannot fully manifest itself in his life as a worker. Instead, he is "left to feed his soul in grossness and crime, and hard, grinding labor."
But why shouldn't Hugh thrive as a sculptor? Even the upper class visitors, who eventually cause Hugh's serious self-introspection, can see his talent: "Do you understand, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man?" says Dr. May after surveying the suffocating korl woman figure near Hugh's furnace. With some training, Hugh could indeed be something as as an artist. But just as quickly as hope comes, hope is lost: "Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?" says the Doctor after Hugh's plea for guidance. This bourgeois indifference to the suffering of the proletariat, and their lack of response to fix it, only serves to fuel the fires - literally and figuratively - of their torment. They do not help the one because one could see a better life, stir up support, and demolish the workforce serving the bourgeois interests. One could become many, and with the many their profits would be gone.
From this encounter, Hugh suddenly has a vision of himself, the man that could have been great, prosperous and happy. He looks at his real self and instead sees the weary, meek man who trudges through life only working and sleeping, never living. His soul itself seeks to escape, his mouth cries for God's justice that will not come for him. Like his korl figure, he is reaching out, looking for something to live for.
From there, Hugh's demise is a foregone conclusion: a check stolen, arrested for theft, put in jail, suicide.
Hugh's suicide is in many ways the only logical conclusion when faced with the life of an industrial worker of the time period. It is a time when death seems more desirable to living. Given his pervading sense of alienation and hopelessness, it seems almost natural that Hugh would find his end in a jail cell with a bit of sharpened tin. Like Bartleby, which was included in this set of works under the heading of "The Workers," this story seems to predate many ideas of Absurdist Albert Camus. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus tackles what he calls the "one truly serious philosophical problem": suicide. There are only three real ways that we can approach a world without meaning, which is the one we all find ourselves in: we can take a leap of faith by trusting in God, we can conclude that life is meaningless and commit suicide, or we can accept and live in a world without meaning. Camus argues for the final option, but Hugh makes another choice with his actions.
We see, then, how the senseless chaos of this world is irreconcilable. And while we may choose to live with God or accept of the absurdity of the universe, the reality is that such idealistic ideas, which on paper hold considerable weight, offer little solace from a life like Hugh's. He looked to God, in anguish and rage, and found nothing. He even attended a sermon by a reformist preacher, but the words fell on dumb ears and the message of hope and change were nothing more than foreign sounds. His sculptural work was perhaps his attempt to live with the meaninglessness of the world, to create meaning through art, but that was unsustainable and left undeveloped. That leaves only one option, if one is to believe Camus and this story: conclude that everything is helpless and commit suicide.
We see in his life the ills of society that preclude happiness from happening for workers like Hugh. God could help, but he has been taken by the upper class. God in the story is only marginally helpful to the working class after Hugh has died, portrayed by the Quaker woman who buries Hugh with some dignity; this is, however, hardly a worthy and timely entry into the sort of divine justice of which an omnipotent lord should be capable. As for escape from the absurd through art and other such pursuits, that too has been gobbled up by the bourgeois. What is left of it, such as Hugh's simple works during break time, are pitiful scraps, leftovers from the great heaping meals selfishly hoarded by those with the money -- and therefore time -- to indulge in them.
The perpetuation of these class conflicts is what ultimately kills Hugh. It isn't any instability of mind, inclination to crime, or anything else commonly blamed for the fall of the impoverished; it is because Hugh, and by extension the whole of the working class, has nothing to live for. His life is just another way for the owners of the factory to make more money. He was born into insignificance, though for no reason other than the luck of the draw. His life as a workingman is entirely accidental. It is an accident comprised of aches and sweat and embitterment. What else can you do but attempt escape, whether through art, crime, God, or some other method? And when that fails, where can you turn to but to death?
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