Jurgis And Ona Summary

During the day, Jurgis and Ona get married in Chicago. All the guests are drunk and have to go back to work in the stockyards. Jurgis and Ona are pissed because Lithuanian tradition is for the guests to chip in and pay for the wedding. But now that they’re in the USA, people are damn freeloaders and don’t give them a dime. So Jurgis and Ona are stuck with this big-ass wedding bill.
Then the book starts talking about how the two lovebirds met at a fair in Lithuania and fell in love. But they couldn’t get married because Ona’s dad didn’t approve of Jurgis. Then the dad died, so Ona’s stepmom, Elzbieta, told them to go to the USA. So they went with all these other people (Elzbieta’s other kids) to America.
They arrived in America and got crappy factory jobs. Ona got a job sewing and 14 year old Stanislovas got a job, too. They saw how corrupt America was when they were hired by these guys who took a cut of their salary and butchered infected meat and shipped it to the public. They family all bought a house which they couldn't afford. found out the house wasn’t even a new one. The whole family just gets jerked around. With all these jobs, they could afford a wedding for Ona and Jurgis.
After the wedding, they work and are all tired as hell. Then Jurgis’ dad dies. He sets up a cheap funeral. Winter comes and nobody has heat. Marija loses her job, Jurgis’ factory loses business, and Jurgis gets paid half for a full day of work. He starts getting pissed. Jurgis joins the worker’s union, and learns English. He learns about democracy and finds out how corrupt these factory dudes are -- they sell rotten meat, and don’t protect workers from "hazards." So he becomes a citizen and rocks the vote by voting for some democratic union boss (and he didn’t even need the MTV bus there to urge him on). Then lots of time passes. Marija gets her job back. Ona has a