gets a job in a sausage factory. She sits in a damp cellar amid "a sickening odor of moist flesh, twisting sausages into links. She is so busy, she has no time to look up at the gallery, from which visitors stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie." The vivid use of imagery by Sinclair easily suggests to the reader of the horrible working conditions that she experiences. He calls her a "wild beast" that creates the picture of an animal in a cage. Dede Antanas, Jurgis's father, experiences the same conditions. The damp pickling room that he works in leaves him with a respiratory problem that makes it hard to talk without coughing. After a couple of jobs, Jurgis continues to find work with the same problems. When a fellow worker gets splattered with molten iron, Jurgis rushes to help him, injuring his hand in the process. However, without regard to his heroism, he is forced to take off 8 days of work without pay. !
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