Beer Baptism

The last third of the book is very sad to discuss when it comes to the characters. Jourgas seemed to be on a downward spiral: he has been in prison a few times for incidents of violence and he has lost close family members. He did not know what to do, and Jourgas went through a symbolic baptism. But instead of water, he uses alcohol. He does not take a bath in it (he never seems to bathe often), but he drowns his sorrows in beer. Which is not healthy and not the best way to deal with your problems. However, the alcohol helped with his symbolic baptism, because of how he started to think.

Since you cannot tell in the last few chapters of the book Upton Sinclair was socialist. Socialism is a system that characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy. Jourgas would not have appreciated it much less heard of socialism if he didn't stumble into a meeting. Well, he actually went to the meeting so he can keep warm during the winter months. But the meetings awoke something inside of him. The ideas of having equality in work, and the working class rising up is something that intrigued him. He stopped drinking, and got a job that was better than working in the stock yards. Jourgas did not have much of a loud voice when it came to certain issues before, but the intimidating yet friendly giant found a voice through socialism.

Beer is what transformed Jourgas. His transformation was something that would have happened without the alcohol because of family issues that he was dealing with. But trying to drown sorrows in alcohol is something that was not uncommon. Jourgas was big and intimidating, but when you learned more about him he was very kind and gentle "...like a boy, a boy from the country (25). This is something that is expected when a man from the country moves to a big city. For Jourgas the city of Chicago is a new world for him. He has a job which he is very good at for a man that can "...take up two-hundred- and- fifty pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car without stagger...(6)."A man as strong (don't forget young) as Jourgas would be picked up in a second to work in a physically demanding place like the stock yards. He was trying to do all he could to support his family in times of hard ship while working in Packingtown and working there without seeing improvement took a toll on him. When members of his family died, drinking seemed to be the only solution. The kind and gentle boy became something that was not expected (by me at least) and was almost like an animal. He would have continued to be one if he had not discovered socialism.