ipl-logo

Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives Sparknotes

1470 Words6 Pages

In the book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, the book is a photojournalism about the slums in New York during the 1880s. The book also served a purpose by exposing the slums to New York City's upper and middle class. Although most of the book takes place in Mulberry Street, throughout the book it would mentioned other streets, like Fourth Ward, Houston Street, Chatham Square, Six Ward, Cherry Street, and more. In chapter three, The Mixed Crowds, in the book it explains how the map of the city is divided by colors, because of how diverse the region is. The book states, “the map show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow.” The color green represents Irish, color blue represents Germans, red represents …show more content…

For example if old tenements are fixed death rates would go down, because the tenements would be bigger, receive direct sunlight, and have ventilation around the tenement. Another way in order for death rates to decrease would be to clean streets. Throughout the book Jacob Riis gives awareness how kids should also be clean, in order for their health. As well as how native born whites should stop hating Asians, for they could not do nothing to change the fact that Asians have come to the United States just like other ethnic groups. By reading the novel, the reader could interpret several themes throughout the book. However the main point in the novel is to examine how several people in New York had to live in small dirty tenements, because they received a low income. The book states, “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then, It did not know because it did not care.” However after Jacob Riis tour around New York’s slums and written a book about it, inspiring reforms changed severals ways throughout the …show more content…

As a muckraker, Jacob Riis wrote about his journey through the New York slums which is described in the book How the Other Half Lives:Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890). Thus, using his research and experience in New York, Jacob Riis establishes a strongly supported novel that, which is based on his first hand experienced information that he gathered while touring through Mulberry Street and several other streets, to better understand the hardship of

Show More
Related
132 Words | 1 Pages

Jacob Riis’s books change the life of the poor. Riis brought into light, the worst of the worst. These horrible conditions were never talked about or mentioned by anyone in the mass public until Riis’s book was published. Not only were his descriptions horribly real and detailed, but his photographs

Read More
1140 Words | 5 Pages

Riis wrote many other books such as The Battle with the Slums and Children of the Tenements. Both these books mainly focused on life in tenements, but also on work condition and living in this time as a child. Jacob Riis is classified as a Progressive because he sought to change what he though was wrong. In Riis’s case he thought having more than one family in tenements was wrong. Or the fact that working in extremely unsafe working conditions was wrong.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

In the book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, Jacob describes in his book on the systems of tenants of housing had failed due to greed and neglecting wealthier people. Also he shows that a correlation between the high crime rate, drunkenness and reckless behavior from the poor and it also shows that they lack of owning a proper home. It mostly focuses on slum conditions of the lower East side of Manhattan, where many immigrants like Jews, Italians, Chinese, Germans, and Irish were packed in tenements. Many of them had no windows, no ventilation, and tried to prevent overcrowding, crime, diseases, filth and most of all poverty. He also exposes the kind of conditions poor people live in.

Read More
680 Words | 3 Pages

How the Other Half Lives is a point by point portrayal on poor people and the penniless in the internal domains of New York City. Riis tries to depict the living conditions through the 'eyes' of his camera. He sneaks up on the general population flashes a photo and afterward tells whatever remains of the city how the 'other half' is living. As stunning as the fact of the matter was without seeing such neediness and awful conditions with their own particular eyes or taking in the involvement with every one of their faculties regardless it appeared like a million miles away or even only a fable. The truth of this book hit the general population of New York directly between the

Read More
666 Words | 3 Pages

During the “Gilded Age”, numerous people immigrated to New York due to an enormous economic growth in the United States. They strove after a better life for themselves and their families but instead, they encountered poverty and discrimination. Jacob Riis, an activist and journalist, captured the living conditions of those who contributed to this economic growth on photographs and tried to bring greater awareness to this issue in his 1890 publication How the other half lives. In the course of this essay, I want to discuss how – and if so, in how far – Giis’ photographs are in accurate representation of living conditions in this era. I will put the main focus on the influence Riis’ work had considering the perception of the working-class.

Read More
1029 Words | 5 Pages

The Second Tenement House Act closed a loophole, set by the first one, by requiring windows to face a source of fresh air and light, not just a hallway. In 1901, after Riis’ book “How The Other Half Lives” was published, the government made it mandatory to follow the strict guidelines addressed in the New York State Tenement Housing Act. This meant improvement with the sewage systems, indoor plumbing and garbage collection. After the great success of his book, Riis career of social reform was launched.

Read More
1377 Words | 6 Pages

In the book “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob A. Riis, the author’s main purpose for writing this book was to provide a voice for the hard-working people who had to live in these poor living conditions. The author believed that any hard-working man’s story should be told and that’s exactly what he wanted to do with this book. I believe he was successful at doing this because not only did the author provide a voice for these people, but he also was able to inform the public and government about the horrific living conditions in which they were living in. Jacob August Riis was born on May 3rd, 1849 in Denmark, and he migrated to the United States in 1870. Jacob had different jobs here in the U.S. one of them was as a police reporter for the New York Tribune (Jacob, “Contemporary”).

Read More
862 Words | 4 Pages

Avi 's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is an adventure tale told by someone who really didn 't think her life would be much of an adventure at all. Miss Charlotte Doyle, a thirteen-year-old girl from the Barrington Better School for Girls, wanted nothing more than to become a proper young lady who wears fancy hats and has fabulous hair (FINE, who doesn 't want that?). Once she boards a ship to America, however, she finds out that a life on the Seahawk is far more thrilling than wearing a frilly dress. Donning boys ' clothing, Charlotte learns to climb the rigging and handle a knife. She also becomes involved in the thrilling machinations underway on the ship: Murder!

Read More
383 Words | 2 Pages

Living in the ghettos of West Baltimore has many rough patches, no matter what time period or era the person lives in. Both Coates and the young characters in the show, The Wire, grew up in West Baltimore where, to survive, people had to look out for themselves. There are a few instances in the memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, that are similar to some of the scenes in The Wire. These similarities will prove that Coates and some of the characters in the show faced the same struggles while growing up in the same area although the growing up took place in different time periods.

Read More
1241 Words | 5 Pages

Riis did research on people that lived in overcrowded homes and in bad condition, he investigate by seeing the role of the government in these neighborhoods he went through police and hospital record and found out that people were getting sick, especially children were mostly affected. Riis focused and saw that the living condition were unhealthy and unsanitary, that the apartment lacked pluming and proper ventilation. He found records that showed death rate in specific neighborhood in the city in 1888 he saw that death rate that year was 26.27 percent (Riis, p. 33). Not only was their high rate of diseases high, but also a high rate of criminality was high. In the city, there were many types of single guys the adventurous, the lonely and criminals who were socializing people in a negative way that

Read More
803 Words | 4 Pages

Mrs. Hedges’ character understands the power that “the street” have over people, and their success, or failure in Harlem. She embraced the reality of “the street.” She actually named ‘the street,” and “separated it from any other street in the city, giving it an identity, unmistakable and apart,” (252). Mr. Jones is the super of the building and is sexually obsessed with Lutie. He has little respect for women and views them as objects

Read More
680 Words | 3 Pages

Being a black woman raised in a white world, Ann Petry was familiar with the contrast in lives of African Americans and whites (McKenzie 615). The Street, centered in 1940’s Harlem, details these differences. While Petry consistently portrays Harlem as dark and dirty, she portrays the all-white neighborhoods of Connecticut as light and clean. This contrast of dark vs light is used in the expected way to symbolize despair vs success.

Read More
796 Words | 4 Pages

The final segment of Jane’s narrative ‘The Quarters’ concerns Blacks who transgress the rules of old - written and unwritten. Jane in her eighties moves back to the quarters from Samson’s house. Jane describes the community in this portion of her narrative. It consists of people searching for dignity even if they must settle for the vicarious esteem derived from the exploits of Black athletes. It is here that Jane spots Jimmy and identifies him as their ‘messiah’.

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel, Invisible Man, the narrator is always in pursuance of justice. His consistent search is driven by his inability to be treated as an equal in this white man’s society. As he fought for justice for the “dispossessed” the Narrator was constantly faced with injustice. Although his success seemed positive in the eyes of others, it had a negative impact on his life as a whole.

Read More
928 Words | 4 Pages

Greek philosopher Plato once described a cave where prisoners aimlessly stare at a wall for the entirety of their existence, and anything they “witness” is merely a blind perception. Lorrie Moore’s coming-of-age novel A Gate at the Stairs provides a modern day reference to this allegory of the cave, as main character, Tassie Keltjin, attempts to find a place and purpose in her life as a quirky college student. While it is a drastic shift from the initial setting described by Plato, the modern day cave can be referenced as the gate that is featured in the novel’s title. Tassie finds a variety of circumstances where she stands at a gate looking onward to a life decision.

Read More

More about Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives Sparknotes

Related Topics

Open Document