A Destructive Society Exposed in Steven Crane’s Maggie A Girl Of The Streets :: Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets

  A Destructive Society Exposed in Maggie           In Maggie, Stephen unfold deals with poverty and vice, not out of curiosity or to promote belly laugh but as a defiant statement voicing the life in slums. Drawing on personal experience, he described the crude and tr distributivelyerous environment that persisted in the inner-city. By focusing on the Johnsons, put out personalizes a large tragedy that affected and reflected American society as a whole. His creation of Maggie was to symbolize a person unscathed by their physical environment. Through Jimmie he attempted to portray a churl raised without guidance who turned into his abusive, drunk father. Crane plays Jimmie and Maggie off of each other as opposites. The Mother and Father are depicted as failed drunken hypocrites and poor role models. Crane skillfully characterizes and stereotypes the personalities in Maggie to bedeck the influence of environment and the wretched conditio ns in slums. Maggie blossomed in a the Great Compromiser puddle and represented purity in a corrupt world. When she gets in concert with Pete she attempted to get out of the world she despised, but instead remained in the slum, unable to escape. Although she is repeatedly abused, Maggie continually picks up the remnants of her life despite universe in a worn and sorry state. Jimmie is seen both in a good light, like his sister, as well as an evil and beastly person. In the beginning of the story, he is portrayed as the little submarine sandwich of Rum Alley. However, that description merely cloaked the brutal fight that he was engaged in and the beating he later gave his sister. Later in the story, Jimmie buys some beer for an old leathery woman, but it is admitn by his father. Jimmie protests in the name of justice but is not successful. The crude and abusive kin with his father severely cripples his chances to become a benevolent adult. Instilled with poor determine he di d not see the world as good and bountiful but rather bad and worse. When he studied human record in the gutter, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it he expressed his pessimistic and cynical status towards the world. The Johnsons mother is typical of a drinking, abusive, and careless mother. She stood for a hypocritical, industrializing society that was neglecting its children. When Jimmie tries to take his mother home when she has been kicked out of a bar she raises her arm and whirls her corking fist at her sons face.