Bread Givers Literary Analysis

Analysis of the Economic Conditions of Bread Givers by Anzia Yerzierska.

The book Bread Givers, written by Anzia Yerzierska, exposes the underlining economic issues and challenges that Americans – especially immigrants, faced in twentieth century America. During this time period, that is the years following the progressive era, immigrants had established themselves and settled in large cities like New York. By making the immigrant Smolinsky family of six the focal point of the story and using one of the family members, Sara Smolinsky as the narrator of the story, Yerzierska reveals the extreme poverty that plagued immigrants living in the lower east side of New York as they struggled to survive. At the same time, she captures the conditions in such a way that invokes the reader’s emotions with the vivid
In fact, most of the problems and situations that Reb Smolinsky was entangled in were financial based. It was his family’s financial situation and his unwillingness for people to see him as a poor man, that caused this supposed man of God Reb Smolinsky, the same man who saw his poverty as a blessing from God, to deny Fania his third daughter a chance to get married to the man of her choice with his reason for doing so being that Lipkin Morris, her lover “[did not] have the money to get a decent haircut [and had] starvation [crying] from his face” (pg. 75). The fact that he supported his own poverty on the account of being a rabbi but criticized others in poverty reveals his indolence as he had a chance make a living in America. And since the novel is an accurate historical account of the 1920’s, it would not be inaccurate to conclude that Americans, most but not all, were like during this