"Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"

Charles So

English 48B

Feb. 7

Journal for Crane

Author Quote:
"The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle, She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl."

Internet Quote:

"an unprecedented influx of immigrants contributed to a boom in population, creating bigger cities and a new consumer society. By these developments, progress was linked with poverty, illustrating that the majority of the US population was skeptical about the dependency on the fluctuation of global economy." (Wikipedia Maggie: Girl of the Streets/history context)

 

Summary:  

Maggie is a young girl living in the ghetto tenements of Bowery,  New York.  Her father and mother are both alcoholics, and she and her two brothers suffer a violent and abusive childhood. Her younger brother dies as an infant and her older brother becomes a callous and pugnacious thug as they grow older. Even though she comes from all this disaster, there is some hope for her.

Personal Opinion:

For Stephen Crane's young age his writing had deep intricacies of life, Crane's subjection of his characters around its environment is cunning and daring. The characters in "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" are very in depth, with the story being short the characters have delightfully imperative scenes where you get a good idea of who they are. Cranes artful dialect of the local area was very hard to translate at times but i found it to be daring as it captured the essence of the people in a closer way as you got to understand them as you expressed yourself as them. The issues of urban poverty, race, sex, and class is all well depicted in Crane's environment and he brings it to a boil with his unorthodox but realistic ending.