A Lithuanian family arrived in Chicago full of hope.
Day 3 · 목표 ⭐
Jurgis and his family arrived in Chicago believing firmly that America's promise of opportunity was real and that hard work alone would build the good life they had always dreamed of.
2Reading· 오늘의 본문
We · Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
Jurgis and his family arrived in Chicago, their hearts full of hope. Believing firmly in America's promise, they thought hard work alone would build the good life. But the city was a machine that crushed dreams. Jurgis found brutal work in the stockyards, his wages too little for their crowded, dirty tenement. Soon, tragedy struck. An accident killed his father, leaving the family destitute. Then, his wife, Ona, was exploited by her foreman. The family, once united by a shared dream, began to fracture under the weight of poverty and despair. Their American Dream had become a nightmare of survival, proving that hard work was no shield against a cruel and indifferent system.
B2 · 128 wordsavg 25.6 w/s
Jack London's narrative swiftly dismantles the immigrant idyll, using the Lithuanian family's arrival not as a beginning but as the precipice of a tragic fall. Their firm belief in America's promise of opportunity, and that hard work alone would suffice, is the central irony London exploits. The promised 'good life' immediately curdles into a reality of exploitative labor, embodied by the brutal stockyards, and squalid, exorbitant housing. The angle of family collapse is not merely a sentimental device but a structural critique. Poverty acts as a corrosive agent, dissolving familial bonds. The father's death is not just a personal loss but the removal of an economic pillar, forcing the family unit into a desperate, vulnerable scramble. Ona's subsequent exploitation underscores how the system preys upon this vulnerability, transforming hope into a commodity to be extracted. Their disintegration illustrates that in the oppressive hierarchy of industrial capitalism, hard work is not a ladder but a grindstone, relentlessly wearing down the individual and the family until both are broken.
C1 · 170 wordsavg 34.0 w/s
3Vocabulary· 핵심 어휘 & 연습
firmly
굳게, 확고하게
They believed firmly in the promise of America.
opportunity
기회
They sought the opportunity for a better life.
alone
오로지, 단지
They thought hard work alone would bring success.
build
세우다, 건설하다
They hoped to build a good life from nothing.
dreamed
꿈꾸다
It was the life they had always dreamed of.
Activity 1 · 빈칸 채우기5 questions
1. Every hour of D-503's life was carefully ____ by the Table of Hours.
2. The ____ of privacy did not exist in the One State.
3. Individual names were ____ and replaced with numbers.
4. The glass walls guaranteed there was no ____ for citizens.
5. The State was ____ declared to represent perfect happiness.