Journal #25

Michelle Romero
English 48A,
Dr. Scott Lankford

Author: Rebecca Harding Davis

"Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up, --some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone" (2602).

The narrator describes Deborah Wolfe as a woman who did not drink any strong alcohol. To show that this was a rare case, the narrator goes on to describe that she must have a special circumstance which keeps her going. It would seem that everyone around her has given up. This woman, however, must have something, the narrator says.

The last line in this passage is the most powerful: men cannot live by work alone. They are not machines, they are not tools. They are humans with feelings. They are people with needs themselves. Therefore, when they must give up their needs and desires to do someone else's bidding, it destroys them. They are not made for this. They are not made for work in the iron mills day after day, night after night taking shifts without any rest.

The narrator makes it clear that in that hard time, a person had to find something, anything to live for. Later, this same theme is revisited when Kirby and his friends start asking about the statue of a woman they find in the mills. Hugh Wolfe answers that the statue of the woman is portraying her hunger. He later explains that she hungers for "summat to make her live" (2609).

How horrible to have to fight for something to live for. You would think that being born gives a person right enough to live their life, but clearly the narrator is showing us different. Clearly, it took every bit of strength left in a person just to resist whiskey, to resist sinking down into the pits.