Kracha A Hero Essay, Research Paper
Thomas Bell’s Out of This Furnace, presents a plot line consisting of tragedy and turmoil. The characters are put the the test and are forced to live in deplorable conditions. Their life is one of routine and there is little deviation from the norm. In these situations, is someone who deviates from the habitual life viewed as a hero or as a rebel? Kracha is not a hero. He doesn’t save lives, he doesn’t fulfill any unachievable goals, and he doesn’t create a better life for the future generations. He came to America with the selfish goal of improving life for himself. He doesn’t think of the ones he left behind and he doesn’t look towards the future. He gets swept into the American lifestyle and gets cheated out of the life he could have had. Kracha boards a boat, with many other just like him, from eastern Europe to America. He then, due to his stupidity, puts himself in a position where he has to walk to his work site. Luckily he stumbles at the right doorstep. “One week to the day after leaving New York, toward mid afternoon, Kracha entered a small mountain village noisy with saw mills…..Kracha should find himself in White Haven without knowing it.” (Bell, p. 8-9) He stays at the mills and lives the everyday life of a railway builder. This becomes tiresome and the pay is little. His wife Elena meets up with him here and soon they travel to find better work. Along the way three baby girls are born to Kracha and Elena. “They did the same work, lived in the same ramshackle shanties, wherever they went.” (Bell, p.21) Kracha and Elena followed Dubik and Dorta to Braddock. Here Dubik supplied a job for Kracha in the steal mills. When accident strikes Dubik’s family and their house is ruined Kracha offers the small amount of money he has, not even thinking of his family and what crisis they might have to encounter. ” ‘ I have a little money saved,’ he said. ‘ I brought it with me and it’s yours if you want it.’ “( Bell, p. 37) This is the type of man Kracha is. He is very frivolous with his money and always spends it in the wrong places.
Kracha does not get involved with the workers who are upset with the low wages and the long hours. He sits on the out side and hears what happens, instead of being the heroic doer of the community. ” Here, Kracha was told, the bargeloads of Pinkertons had tried to land and take possession of the mill. They were still there, effectively kept from landing by the union men barricaded on shore, and unable to leave because their tugboat had gone back to Pittsburgh.” (Bell p. 41) After Dubik’s death in the mills, Kracha decides to search for a life outside of the mill. Elena seams to be the one with the realistic ideas. ” Elena thinks she would like to go back. Since coming to America she’s had a bad time of it, what with one thing or another. She remembers what it was like when she was a girl and she thinks it would be the same again….Elena would rather I bought a farm, but I got all I wanted of farming in the old country. There’s no money in farming. The way to get rich in America is to go into business. Buy cheap, sell dear. There’s your fortune in four words.” Kracha says on page 59. What Kracha doesn’t realize is that hardly anyone is successful in big business. He doesn’t see the inborn skill that it takes. He doesn’t know how to make it big. He just knows that it has been done before. He doesn’t understand business or the politics involved with it. He goes to Perovsky for financial counseling and help with managing the store. In a conversation with Perovsky Kracha states, in reference to the banks, ” Bastards. I would enjoy throwing the whole business back in their faces. I’d lose by it but it would almost be worth it.” In return Perovsky says, ” You think they would mind? As long as they got paid for it you could spit at them.” (Bell, p. 94.) Kracha had the right idea, that was to make money. He was able to do this for a while but his main tragic flaw was ignorance. He didn’t know how to hold on to his money once it was in his hands. ” Elena’s funeral had