Customer Reviews

Maggie, A Girl of the Streets and Selected Stories (Signet Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Of all his works--'The Red Badge of Courage' included--Stephen Crane loved most his 'Maggie,' and for good reason.

'Maggie' is the tale of an inevitable fall from grace on the part of a young, innocent girl trapped in the vicious world of New York City's slums. Yearning for acceptance and love, beaten at home by alcoholic parents, Maggie sets out with Pete, a local bartender whose "cultured" mannerisms elicit great respect from the impressionable young girl. However, when Pete spurns her for another, Maggie is ejected out onto the street, forced into prostitution to make a living. We last see her moving off, a huge, oily fat man in tow, for a darkened corner in the city's seedy underworld.

If Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' is a torrent of social anger and protest, Crane's 'Maggie' is like a brilliant lightning strike, flashing across our vision and leaving us temporarily blinded. The book--scarcely 70 pages--is succint, brutish, and merciless. Crane allows his readers to form their own opinions regarding the characters. His innovative use of near-phonetic spelling to depict in the reader's ear the local dialect of New York's rough neighborhoods was shocking and difficult to comprehend when the book was first released. It lends "Maggie" an air of earthy legitimacy.

Ultimately, "Maggie" is a cry for the plight of poor children--the souls we overlook with a callous unease mirrored in Pete's offhand, uncaring rejection of young Maggie's genuine love and affection. It is, without qualification, Stephen Crane's greatest and most moving achievement.

This book is a very fast read. it's a small book and also one that is hard to put down. It tells a story that is historical 19th century American(New York). A typical slum(immigrant) family. It's Brutal, shocking and sad. One you will think about for a long while after you read it.

The literary element that I chose to write about was conflict. The book is about a brother and a sister who grew up in a very poor part of New York. They did have a younger brother but he died. Maggie and Jimmies (the brother) parents were both abusive drunks. They were always telling each other to go to hell, always fighting, hitting, breaking furniture, and passing out on the floor. Their dad eventually dies and the mother lives. Jimmie and Maggie both get jobs. Jimmie ends up with a negative outlook on life and acts just as he was raised, but maybe a little bit soberer. Maggie on the other hand didn't seem to end up like Jimmie. She knew her life was crappie that she lived in a crappie place, her mother was a very big drunk but yet she seemed unfazed, infact Maggie turned into quiet a looker. So some of her conflicts started when she was young, but the got even worse when she met her brother's friend Pete. Pete was sort of like Maggie's brother, but maybe in my opinion a little more stupid and cockier. And to Maggie he was the classiest person she knew, even though in reality he really wasn't, so maybe Maggie really didn't understand what classy was. Pete took Maggie out a few times on dates and she was crazy about him and he seemed to be some what amused by her too for the minute. One day Maggie and Pete had came home after Maggie's mother had just finished a drunken fight with Jimmie and then her mother turned on her and basically suggested that she was a slut or a "fallen woman" and told her to leave and she was never welcomed again. Maggie ended up living with Pete and things were ok for a while, but he ended up tired with her anyways. Maggie did try to move back in but Jimmie and her mother had felt like she was a fallen woman, so to keep her going from time to time she ended up prostituting an d eventually killed her self when her Maggie's mom hered about Maggie's death she said she forgave her.

I thought I'd never read a book sadder than The Chocolate War, but I was wrong. Maggie: A Girl of The Streets is desolate. What I found most disturbing about it is that Maggie largely doesn't have parents, and certainly not loving parents. Both parents are alcoholics, and the father dies early. The mother is a brute who often smashes furniture in drunken rages. When Maggie disappears from the family's house while dating Pete (which is never really explained), her mother and older brother conclude that she's behaving scandalously with Pete, and disown her. This, and the mother's rants about how she raised Maggie better than that, make her hypocritical.

Characterization is not a strength of this novella. Maggie's mother is a completely flat and static character; so is Pete, and probably Jimmie, the older brother. The glimpses into Maggie's mind are limited; only during her dates with Pete do we see her thoughts extensively.

I HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ALL TRANSACTION TROUGH ALL BUSINESSES ASSOCIATED WITH AMAZON. I WOULD LIKE A POINT SYSTEM THAT WOULD ALLOW A STUDENT SUCH AS MYSELF REVIEW A FREE BOOK AFTER SO MANY ORDER.


THANKS
JOSEPH ST. ROMAIN

This book was a good story but the way it was written was really hard to understand and hardly worth reading.