Life In The Iron Mill Analysis

There are different approaches into viewing life. In the narrative Life in the iron mills, Hugh one of the main characters had a rough time throughout the course of his life. Hugh grew up in a low economic household that required him to work from an early age. Having to work heavy hours with a low wage, throughout the narrative Hugh demonstrates the way he started copping with his meaning of life. Hugh strives to find meaning through his art by expressing his emotions in his art. When a person goes through a traumatic experience this tends to change the perspective of one 's life. According to Emily Smith, “ Having negative events happen to you, decreases your happiness, but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.” People tend to …show more content…
The sculpture that he builds represents the suffering of the workers in the mill. The statue is described by Rebecca Harding as, “ There was not one line of beauty or grace in it; a nude woman form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs instinct with someone poignant login.” The sculpture does not represent an ordinary woman. What Hugh was trying to represent with his sculpture was the poor condition in which the worker of the mills were working under. It also, represented the hidden emotions that many of the workers, including Hugh had towards the way they were treated for their hard labor. During the 1900’s century, workers had no support from the government. The government protected the owner of the business instead of protecting the workers right. As stated by Alex Gourevitch, “In the vast majority of these cases, violence against labor carried the patina of legality. The Supreme Court and its state-level counterparts interpreted statutory legislation, the common law, and the Constitution to prohibit strikes, work stoppages, sympathy strikes, and peaceful boycotts." The workers worked under many inequalities and poor conditions. This demonstrates that the workers had no government protection of their human rights. Workers would work many unreasonable hours to earn low-wages. Instead of the government protecting them and allowing them to fight for their right, they would punish anyone who will disobey the law. During the nineteen century, we see a lot of injustice against worker, they were overworked and they had no benefits. Like in the Life in the Iron Mills, Hugh and his coworkers were not treated like humans. The upper class citizens looked down on them and treated them as the minority, venting negative things about the workers of the