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Part 1, Chapter 3
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
In March, Kracha receives word from a priest in the old country that his wife, Elena, gave birth to a son but lost the child from fever a month later. The priest also reveals the Elena’s health is bad and her relationship with her mother-in-law worse. He recommends that Kracha send for her to come to America. However, Kracha must first pay Andrej back the loan that allowed Kracha to come to America, which takes a full year. After he repays the loan, he sends for Elena.
Andrej’s loan to Kracha is what allows Kracha to come to America, showing how family ties bind individuals across continents. Andrej is the first link in the chain that connects with Kracha and then Elena, as working to pay off Andrej is what ultimately lets Kracha bring Elena to America.
Themes
Elena arrives in White Haven in February of the next year. Kracha is dismayed to find her “thin and pale” and suffering from an unsightly goiter, a common ailment in her home village. Elena tells Kracha that having the child made her ill, but Kracha is unable to offer any tender words, causing “a flood of pain” that “washed the hope out of Elena's eyes.” The next day the Sedlars help prepare a room for Elena and Kracha, and the couple settles in. Elena, however, is no longer the happy, healthy girl that Kracha left in the old country. “Her poor health, or America, [has] changed her,” much to Kracha’s irritation. She is now listless and largely uninterested in his desires, but soon she becomes pregnant. Meanwhile, Dubik sends for his sweetheart, Dorta, to come to Pennsylvania from Slovakia. She arrives at Thanksgiving time, and three weeks later, she and Dubik get married. During the wedding, Elena gives birth to a daughter. They name her Mary.
The poor state of Elena’s health when she arrives in Pennsylvania highlights more of Kracha’s negative qualities: his selfishness and inability to empathize with others. He cares little for Elena’s own suffering, instead focusing on how her suffering impacts his own sexual desires. Here, Bell also introduces the theme of women’s work, embodied in the way Elena is forced to bare Kracha’s children despite her poor health and his general indifference to her struggles. To be a Slovak woman is to be a hard worker whose work goes underappreciated and even ignored.
Themes
