Maggie's story is one of the past. Following her brief life exposes the conditions that many suffered through in the tenements. The reader encounters images of violence, poverty and filth, and hopelessness. However, because this story is placed in a time removed from our own and Crane writes with such irony that the tale is nearly humorous, it is difficult to develop a strong emotional response or sense of sympathy towards the characters. It felt as though a story that ended so tragically should have left some sort of deep impression upon me that would elicit sorrow when I thought about Maggie's fate, but this was not the case. So, I tried to relate the story to something more modern, something that I might be able to better connect with.
Stories of poverty can make me feel as though it is some far off concept that doesn't really exist in my own world because it is occurring in the realm of literature, and is sometimes placed in a time other than my own or in a country so far away I can not grasp the reality of the culture. I do have some experiences though that bring a modern day Maggie to light and help me sympathize with the plight of people who have lives and struggles so foreign to me.
A little over a year ago I worked as a camp counselor at a YMCA camp in the suburbs. Many inner-city children and young adults attended the camp. I headed up a group of troubled high school students, one of whom was from the city. One morning, within the first week of camp, she came to me and told me she did not feel like participating in group activities. She went on to explain that her brother had been killed the night before. I was in shock. Her brother had been involved in a violent lifestyle, like Jimmie, but of a more organized manner. He was in one of Hartford's most notorious gangs, the Latin Kings. In order to leave the gang he had to take what they call a "blood ticket". Earning a "blood ticket" consists of gang members lining up across from each other and forming a tunnel which departing member has to go through while being beaten and stabbed. If the member trying to withdraw makes it through without dying they have received their "blood ticket" out. This girl watched her brother die before he made it all the way through the tunnel, and because he did not survive she was being pressured to join in his place.
Like Maggie and many of the people living in the tenements, she and her brother were trapped in an unwanted life-style and it seemed that the only way out was death. This girl was only 14 and had already lived life with an abusive mother who was addicted to crack and traded her for a fix to drug dealers. During the time that she was in the dealer's possession she was raped and beaten. After being recovered by authorities and turned over to foster care she continued to live in a less than safe home and in a threatening urban neighborhood. She had no choice of where to live and her opportunities were limited.
This is one of the few people I have encountered who could make a life of poverty and limitations real to me. Stories such as Maggie are great reminders of the horrors of the past tenements, but this girl reminded me that places as terrible as the tenements and even worse still exist close to home. There are very young people who must walk out their front door and simply try to survive every day as upper class citizens remain as ignorant and unaware as in previous times.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/25/nyregion/a-violent-battle-of-wills-besieges-hartford.html
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