Chapter+16

Chapter 16 [24 Minutes]

QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT...


 * CHAPTER SUMMARY:**

//"[C]ould they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?"//

Jurgis is arrested and taken to jail, where old men and boys, hardened criminals and petty criminals, innocent men and guilty men share the same squalid quarters. A date is designated for Jurgis’s trial and his bond is set at three hundred dollars. Afterward, he is taken to the county jail and made to strip; he is then walked, naked, down a hallway past the inmates, who leer and make comments. He is put into a small cell with a filthy, bug-infested mattress. Upon hearing a clanging of bells that evening, Jurgis realizes that it is Christmas Eve. He recalls the previous Christmas, when he and Ona walked along the avenue with the children and gazed at the marvelous food and toys in the store windows. He begins to sob when he thinks of his family spending Christmas without him and with Ona ill. He laments his family’s plight and feels that the Christmas chimes are mocking him.