Alcoholism In Maggie: A Girl Of The Street

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Starting in the year 1875, a public, negative scandal had begun known as the Whiskey Ring. This scandal was made up of different groups who were defrauding the government of liquor tax revenues. For a lot of people this scandal was a good idea, based upon they would not be paying taxes; and they believed they did not deserve raised taxes on liquor due to the damages caused by the Civil War. For others, many people’s outcome was affected in many negative ways. In the story Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Whiskey contributed to the main characters down stream; such as alcoholism, abuse, negativity and even hatred. In the Evil Beast, the Whiskey Ring showed families and neighbors different morals. This scandalous ring was the beginning of the …show more content…
In the sermon The Evil Beast, it explained the negativity that alcohol had on the society. In the book Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the negativity of alcoholism was actually shown. The Evil Beast gave examples of the way peoples lives without alcohol would be, compared to peoples lives that involved alcohol. For example, in the sermon there were two paragraphs toward the end that explained life with alcohol and life without it. The first paragraph talked about the positivity in a household. It explained how there was only love, never hatred being the family members. In the second paragraph, it explained the opposite; such as how there were hatred in stead of love between the family members. In Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, we were actually able to see the negativity that alcohol, specifically Whiskey caused. For example, when the mother and father would drink, they would fight, argue, and complain all the time. They made the family household so difficult to ever live in, honestly to even come home to. Due, to alcoholism they lost a baby, and further on they lost there daughter. Based upon alcohol being in those children’s’ lives there son became an alcoholic. There family was honestly broken apart, and could not ever be put back together. Reading the book and that sermon, I realized how bad alcohol really was especially in that time

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