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Part 1, Chapter 18
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Out of This Furnace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Immigration and American Identity
Industrialization and Destruction
The American Dream vs. Reality
Women’s Work
Capital vs. Labor
Summary
Analysis
Kracha spends the next week away from home but continues his affair with Zuska. When he does return home he sleeps on the parlor couch until Elena advises him to sleep in bed so that he can get “proper sleep.”
Elena’s silence indicates that she has resigned herself to her own insignificance in her husband’s eyes. Whereas he at first did not recognize her work, now Kracha does not even recognize Elena herself as a person.
Themes
Soon, the whole neighborhood knows about the affair, costing Kracha several customers at his butcher shop. He stubbornly carries on, but soon he learns that the rumored railroad expansion near his invested property will not happen. The bank demands that the principle of his first mortgage be reduced by $500. An angry Kracha visits Perovsky to complain about the investment. Perovsky advises him to the pay the bank because “the railroad is bound to build sooner or later.” Furious, Kracha leaves Perovsky and convinces the bank to give him a six-month renewal on the property at a cost of $75. He then puts the lot up for sale and confides his misery to Zuska.
Kracha ignores the decline in his customer base due to the affair because he is in over his head as a businessman. This point becomes clearer following the failure of his property investment. Kracha’s insistence that he not become acquainted with the most significant details of life in America leaves him unprepared to deal with the vagaries of business. He is a stark contrast to Perovsky, a Slovak who thoroughly enmeshes himself in American business.
Themes
