In his 1941 novel, Out of This Furnace, Thomas Bell brings the world of immigrant workers with their struggles and successes in America, specifically Pittsburgh, to an individual level. The microcosm of this world which we enter upon reading about characters from three generations, George Kracha, Mike Dobrejcak, and Dobie Dobrejcak, essentially reflects the macrocosm encompassing Pittsburgh, the Industrial Revolution, and the capitalist system. .
This story begins with a man immigrating to the United States in order to take advantage of the seemingly endless work opportunities and ends with another man, generations later, striving to control the very socioeconomic system into which his grandfather, the earlier man, was unknowingly thrust. As this story line follows individual characters, it addresses the large ideas - family, marriage, money, children - facing each individually that, in turn, bind all together as a whole. Encircling all of these ideas, this novel relates the strive for security, particularly the strive for security in the socioeconomic system of capitalism. In Part 4, Chapter 9, Bell examines two varying generational perspectives. These perspectives grant us insight into how both views on the capitalist system develop and attempts to find security within capitalism can change as time passes and generations separate. .
This passage begins with Dorta, an older woman of the same generation of George Kracha, expressing how she feels the "old times" were and how things are different: .
Everybody knew everybody else in those days. . . It's not like that now anywhere, North Braddock or East Pittsburgh or anywhere. There was more friendliness. . . Nobody was a stranger. At first, when there were still a lot of Irish living here, we kept together because we had to. But when the Irish got out it was all our own people. It was good then. (330).
This excerpt immediately gives us a sense of Dorta's perspective in two distinct ways.
