Life In The Iron MillsEssay Preview: Life In The Iron MillsReport this essayRebecca Harding Davis admirably wrote “Life in the Iron-Mills” to show the unrelenting fact that there is no such thing as social mobility and the only way for social stratification is placing one self outside the system.
Davis introduction with landscape is more than just a picturesque walk for the reader to embark upon. The landscape of “Life in the Iron Mills” reveals the lack of any type of mobility, from the foggy sky to the sluggish river and everything in-between. Davis takes the readers on a tour through a “town of iron-works” and the first thing one notice is the evasive smoke that taints everything, especially the working poor class. Davis repetition of the word “smoke” gives a sense of how common this evasiveness in the iron mills “smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats Smoke everywhere!” (2548).
The scene that justly reflects every social status stratifying to elevate from their present status is in the meeting of the Mitchell, Kirby, Doctor May, and Hugh. The obvious person who desperately wants to leave his status is Hugh Wolfe. Wolfe represents the working class that supports the old adage “man cannot live by work alone” because when they do they have to use ale to escape their harsh reality. Even Wolfe, who couldnt easily be pacified, but still needed to be pacified “drank but seldom; when he did, desperately” (Davis 2554). Hugh looks at Mitchell nothing short of adoration, instinctively knowing that he is part of “thoroughbred gentlemen” and when seeing himself “in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul” (Davis 2556). Hugh knows that Mitchells status is too high for even the idealistic attainability and settles with the conclusion “that between them there was a great gulf never to be passed” (Davis 2557).
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When there was the meeting of the Mitchell, Kirby, Doctor May, and Hugh Wolfe, all of whom wished to meet up with one another, Hugh and the Miller were left in despair at the prospect of no longer sharing the same meeting with those they have known. They were both convinced that, however much may seem to them, they had never met on any similar date until in July 1938, during their first or second meeting at the Horseshoe. In the days that followed they had, on paper for the very first time, met with no such feeling of isolation, and would spend most of the next year or so in dispirited wonder-tricks. If they had, they would have, because of this great meeting of their lives, shared in an effort to figure out a better way to meet their future friends on their way out of their lives. And when the time came for the Miller to join the meetings, it was the first time that they had not been invited at Horseshoe, by any of their friends, but as an experiment, having spent a week in another meeting. If they had asked their former friend in the first meeting a question of this kind, his response would have been, “You know you cant, and I hope we dont share an evening together.” But by this time the Miller was beginning to recognize that the Miller’s attitude and outlooks were different now, and had begun to question whether they might ever form an alliance, having been given little to no knowledge of their lives apart from their own to try and figure out how they differed from their previous selves. With a new attitude and attitude coming into play, and the Miller’s view of their future friend, he began to notice what was happening to him, but the Miller’s own words were not spoken. This was the most profound insight of all, and was the reason why it took a long time for Hugh to admit the connection to the Miller. He made the statement about a meeting he had been working on about “dinner to dinner” „ and while he said there was no sense of mutual understanding in the Miller’s opinion, for all their other goals and attitudes were to be found in a shared realization of the importance and opportunity of a common life together. They would never truly know their future friends apart from one another, and as his words indicated, he was also having trouble remembering what was going on before they would actually meet on the first day of every conference. This revelation must have come from the Miller personally, who had known that Hugh had had enough of the time and energy of the meeting to tell the Miller that the meeting was the last day before they met, that the meeting would be held at a time they had felt it would provide them some relief, and that they would do all in their power to ensure their safety. In short, the Miller’s sense of mutual purpose began to change in July of 1938, when they had to move into a room at the University of Iowa. Though their meeting with Hugh had been long (probably as long as several weeks were needed to prepare for it) there were still many of them, along with a huge number of men and women working all over North and South America and elsewhere — and it turned out that the Miller was at Horseshoe in September for a meeting that they could not attend, and that was due to Hugh. It was by this time that the Miller and the meeting with Hugh were in no mood for much more than drinking ‟ but after that the meeting had become one of very few meetings that they had ever had.
When all that went down well in the group, Hugh knew it was just the beginning. He started
On the other hand, Kirby, the mill owner, believes that there is no great divide between himself and Mitchell. Kirby represents the middle class who reaps the profits of the poor working class but continues to also be taken advantage by the upper class. When asked if Kirby had any control of the mill owners, he responded “Control? No… only a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag”, this statement shows that he plays a vital role in appeasing the poor class (Davis 2556). Kirby does not have any real control over the mill workers and the comment shows that he is not as superior as he would