Analyzing Jacob Riis 'The Awakening'

Between 1850 and 1920, while America was at its good times, immigrants from all around the world came to the United States looking for job opportunities. Unsurprisingly, immigrants soon make up the majority population of the cities. However, newcomers faced hostility, discrimination, and were separated from the white citizens, but where do they settle? In 1890, Jacob Riis, a photojournalist, exposed the living conditions of hundreds of immigrants in New York’s slums in his book How the Other Half Lives. In this essay, an excerpt taken from Jacob Riis’s book will be analyzed to illustrate the issues he wants to reveal to the public. The primary source being analyzed in this essay is an excerpt called The Awakening, taken from Jacob Riis’s …show more content…
The letters of the title were all capitalized and in bold letters, it looks as if it wants to grab the readers’ attention to notice the title. The title seems to have a symbolic meaning; The Awakening seem to give a sense that Riis wants the readers to be aware of what was going on, and to bring light to the issues and expose them to the public. Throughout the excerpt, Jacob Riis talked about how even though the government has passed the Tenement-House Act, only little improvement was made. The act only provided temporary relief, and problems like overcrowding and poverty still exist. A deeper message and irony was found in the excerpt when Riis pose a question asking where are the tenements today, and answered it himself saying the tenements today are New York. It is symbolic because this basically demonstrates how Riis believes that New York are full of tenements and with immigrants living in them, making up a big part of the population. In other words, immigrants occupied a huge chunk of New York but yet they are still living in such bitter environments which makes it ironic. It is almost the same as saying New York is poor, New York lacks