Jews Without Money

Michael GoldFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1930

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Themes

The Cycle of Poverty

The characters in Jews Without Money are trapped in cycles of poverty. Escaping the tenement buildings is hard, as the society conspires to ensure that the poor remain poor. Poor people spend twice as much money just to get by: They are forced to invest money in clothing that instantly falls apart; they have to pawn possessions at extortionate rates just to put food on the table; and they have to work twice as long for half as much money just to pay the rent. Being poor costs a great deal of money, meaning that the people in the poorest communities are trapped in an oppressive cycle as putting any money aside demands huge sacrifices.

The trap of poverty is also seen in the jobs people perform. The dangerous jobs are the least well paid, as Herman’s situation illustrates. He is a house painter, and, like all house painters, he knows that the noxious fumes from the lead paint will slowly erode his health. He will lose either his mind or his health due to the lead in the paint, and he is eventually made so ill that he falls from the scaffolding and breaks both of his legs. He cannot work, so he can barely feed his family. The dangerous nature of these jobs means that they are filled by the most desperate people, thereby ensuring that they will not be able to continue to work for their entire lives and will be unable to build for a sustainable future. Poverty cuts lives short and limits the amount a person can enjoy their life, ensuring that the cycle of suffering continues.

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The only way to escape poverty is by exploiting others. A person can escape either by being the boss of a company or by using tricks and schemes to cheat people out of their money. As with the example of the dangerous jobs, Herman is a victim of this vicious practice. He is tricked out of an ownership stake in a factory and then loses a great deal of money while trying to buy a house from his boss. The money he spends on these ventures could have helped his family, but when he discovers how much he has lost, there is no one to help him. Herman is trapped in an exploitative cycle of poverty in which the institutions and the authorities do nothing to help him break free. There is no justice for the poor, who must remain trapped so that the wealthy can continue to be wealthy.

The Importance of Community

The characters are trapped in cycles of poverty, so they are forced to depend on one another for support. This dynamic emphasizes the importance of community for the most deprived people, as neighbors and friends are often the only people to turn to when something goes wrong. Injuries, evictions, or deaths force people to turn to those around them for support. Whether they are raising rent money, assisting with funeral costs, or providing help with chores while a person is injured, neighbors, family, and friends form a support network where the state does not. This informal arrangement is unspoken and unpredictable, but it is essential for the survival of everyone in the tenement building.

Katie is the embodiment of community support. She goes out of her way to help people who are most in need. She looks after children, takes in distant family members, and visits other people’s homes when they cannot work or when they are suffering the most. She never expects anything in return, and she hopes that, when she is in a similar position, she will be able to rely on those people whom she has helped. Katie illustrates the ways in which class solidarity is formed among the poor people in New York.

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The community support is so powerful that it crosses ethnic and racial lines. Mike spends a great deal of the narrative outlining the divisions between the Jewish, Italian, Irish, and other communities. These divisions are largely organized on a geographic sense, with certain groups limited to certain blocks and buildings. However, Katie and others go out of their way to help people even outside of their ethnic group. In the cafeteria where she works, Katie helps people of all races and ethnic groups. She also helps her neighbors who are not Jewish, even when other people might ignore those outside of their own demographics. Katie’s willingness to go outside of her own group to help people is a demonstration of the way in which class solidarity transcends racial and ethnic boundaries. The community is important because it shows that the people in the building are not separated because they are Irish, Italian, or Jewish. Instead, they are united by their economic status as the poorest people in the city. They support one another because there is no one else to support them.

The Link Between Poverty and Violence

Mike’s life is an illustration of the ways in which violence and poverty are inextricably linked. Many of the immigrants come from violent backgrounds, where they are attacked and sometimes killed for their ethnic identity. This historic violence is combined with the impossible living conditions in the poorest communities in America and is passed down to the next generation. Children learn to be violent from a young age. Even when Mike is a schoolboy, his first thought is to join up with a street gang of similarly aged children. They see pimps, gangsters, and other criminals beat one another up on a daily basis, and they are so familiar with violence that it becomes second nature to them. Not only do they enact violence against other gangs, but the young boys are so aware of the violence all around them that they need protection. Violence is a fact of life in the poorest communities, and it becomes worse and worse as people become more and more used to its existence.

Poverty makes people desperate and forces them into violence. Prostitution and theft are carried out using violence as a means of coercion, while murders and beatings are frequent on the Lower East Side. The sense that everything is cheap and nothing has value extends to human life. Among the poorest people, life is cheap because the society does not value their lives, so it permits violence against their bodies. The callous disregard for the plight of the poor people in New York is an act of violence itself, one that is made worse because of the people’s desperation. Their desperation begins to reflect the violent indifference of the world around them, and they enact violence on one another because they know nothing else.

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The violence of the state is also an important factor. Louis One Eye is made into a monster by his experiences in a state institution, turned into a murderer due to his mistreatment as a boy. The police take what they want, beat rebellious kids, and function as a gang unto themselves, one that is not bound by the law. The politicians are distant and uncaring, while the state itself provides no assistance to the most desperate people. Violence is bound to poverty because the very nature of the society inflicts violence on its poorest members by forcing them to remain in their squalid, impossible living conditions.