Tenement Life In Di Donato

The author’s most successful device in the story is his realistic illustration of the settings in which the Italian-American laborer had to live through. His tone in the novel accurately reflects those of the immigrants-fearful, submissive, and confused. Presenting the readers with the horrific tenement settings that the laborers were forced to live in makes the readers empathize with them. The tenement was a large building in which thousands of immigrants were housed in after they arrived to America. They lived a major part of their life under miserable conditions. Di Donato portrays the declining quality of life through accounts of tenement living laborer. One example that very accurately and vividly displays the current life situation that
the Italian laborers were going through is when di Donato portrays the tenement life:
“Tenement was a twelve-family house. There were two families on each floor with the flats running in box-car fashion from front to rear and with one toilet between them. Each flat had its distinctive powerful odor. There was the particular individual bouquet that aroused a repulsion fallowed by sympathetic human kinship; the great organ of Tenement fuguing forth its rhapsody with pounding identification to each sense .... Then the winding staired passage of Tenement hallway gaseous in its internationality of latrines, dank with walls that never knew day, acrid in the corners where vermin, dogs, cats and children relieved themselves; the defeated air rubbery with greasy cooking and cut with cheap strong disinfectant.”
Di Donato successfully portrays an authentic picture of tenement life which provided housing to thousands of immigrants from multiple nationalities that came to America in search of a better future for their family and themselves.
Many stereotypical and ignorant Americans blamed the conditions in the slums on these new inhabitants. However, the compelling circumstances forced the immigrants to settle down in horrid conditions. These immigrants had no choice but to accept their squalid fate at the time. Through such accurate and descriptive accounts of tenement life, di Donato informs the readers of the poor quality of existence for the
immigrants. Di Donato’s greatest and most effective rhetorical strategy is marked by his ability to let readers relive events and situations that the characters face in the novel. The most important and tragic event in Christ in Concrete includes Geremio’s death due to the construction accident and Paul’s loss of faith in spiritual hope. In the first chapter, the author writes down his father, Geremio’s, last living thoughts before his unfortunate death.
“Blood vessels burst like mashed flower stems. He screamed. ‘Show yourself now, Jesu! Now is the time! Save me! Why don’t you come! Are you there! I cannot stand it–ohhh, why do you let it happen—where are you? Hurry hurry hurry!’" (18).
The great wrath of Job is too strong to overcome even by God as Geremio’s faith ultimately does not save his life nor supplies him with comfort before his death.
The author explains that his father’s death is due to the padrone’s criminal negligence, who sacrificed his laborers’ lives just to save some money on the project by avoiding safety standards. Di Donato traces the cause of Geremio’s death to the fundamental root, which is the dangerous and trampling economic system. The Christian symbolism in this scene depicts great irony. In Christianity, Jesus’s death helped save humanity from sin. Geremio’s death on Good Friday, on the other hand, was not redemptive; it was a worthless sacrifice caused by his inhumane padrones. On the other hand, Paul’s religious crisis happens after Nazone’s death towards the end of the novel. Paul finally realizes the reality of the less fortunate in the world through years of poverty and hardship combined with the shock of Geremio’s and Nazone’s death. After Paul becomes sick on the Sunday after Nazone’s funeral, he has a feeling that something is wrong in his religious faith in Catholicism that his mother has kept throughout the years. After that instance, Paul completely stops attending Mass. Annunizata becomes witness to Paul’s transformation from the innocent and humble paesano look to a mood of harshness. This metamorphosis represents him changing from a socially ignorant man to that of a class-conscious man. He finally comes to the
realization that the capitalistic society only takes advantage of the laborer’s helplessness and that each Job forces him to keep working on and on. After his loss of faith in Catholicism, Paul comes home one day to criticize the myths and superstitious beliefs that have held up the Italian immigrants against the injustices that they face with every day. When he sees his mother pray, he gets enraged and points to the crucifix and declares, “That’s a lie.” He further states that the afterlife is a complete lie also when he says, “We have only one life! One life! Here where we are is our only life!” At the end, Paul demands justice from his trapped life by exclaiming, “I want justice here! I want happiness here! I want life here! Now! Now! I want salvation now! For I know oh I know we cannot live forever.” When Paul “pulled the crucifix from her and crushed it in his hands,” at that moment, he lost his faith that he had on God and Catholicism (di Donato 231). Paul’s actions match with the author’s sentiment concerning the prospective of Italian-American immigrants and mankind overall. Paul feels that the immigrants must first overcome their religious beliefs to thrive and develop in the new world by themselves. They have to help themselves first. Paul’s ambition to survive in the new world by leaving behind his confined past symbolizes the author’s aspiration to produce a socialist man. Paul’s hands pulling the crucifix away from his mother represents a metaphor for the powerful hands of Job, affirming Job’s hold over religious faith.