Jews Without Money and the Mumbai Slums
Michael Gold's 1930 "Jews without Money" is a clear example that history does not only repeat itself but creates a certain pattern out of which human kind cannot be taken out and redirected to another path. Taking the topic from Gold's book and comparing it to current cases of other slums throughout the globe, it can be said that the conditions of the poor people have not changed throughout the decades and even more, despite the international development, the discrepancies between the rich and the poor are constantly increasing.
The present research takes into account the way in which the living conditions of people in the slums of Mumbai (Dharavi) can be compared to the situations to those in "Jews Without Money" by Michael Gold. It is argued that the living conditions are similar, yet for the people living in the slums of Mumbai, similar to other slums in the world, the possibility of a new socialist regime, as it was the case in the 1930s, is not an option. This subject is dealt with from two perspectives. On the one hand, the conditions as mentioned by Gold in his book are blended with fiction and the need for making the story somewhat appealing for the reader. On the other hand, the realities in Dhavari, one of the largest slums in the world and clearly one of the most notorious are facts of a reality that is not necessarily subject for embellishment. The second perspective is provided by the historical context in which the action of the novel is set. More precisely, the author was a big supporter of the socialist economic approach and it is precisely the ending of the book that provides the key of the novel taken as a fictional work. By comparison, the dwellers in the Mumbai slums do not have the option of awaiting a "Messiah" that would take a political or social form. The projects that have been drafted to redevelop the slums are not aimed at maintaining the current number of dwellers in the slums, which would affect their way of being and existing nonetheless.
The living conditions that are presented in Gold's books are focused on the Jewish minority that came from Eastern Europe in the "Land of all opportunities," which has often been the label identifying the United States in recent centuries. However, the story in itself is not a success story about succeeding in achieving the American dream but rather a criticism at the expense of the capitalist means of economic development. The entire novel focuses on the harsh conditions that represent every day life for the dwellers of the Lower East Side in New York.
The more concrete focus is on a Jewish family that is unfortunately struck by bad luck and the sole provider of the family is the mother, as her husband and the father of her child cannot work due to a physical impairment. At the same time however, the novel is not necessarily about the particular drama that is challenging this family, but rather more a review through the lenses of a young adult of a decaying life in an environment of poor people that would come to experience the Great Depression. More precisely, "Had it been published a year or two earlier when the Jazz Age still seemed to be booming, it might well have gone unnoticed; had it been published a year or two later in the midst of the Depression, it might have seemed old hat. The collapse of the economy had ruined the plans and destroyed the dreams of a whole generation, as the collapse of Papa Granich's business and health twenty years earlier had ruined the plans and destroyed the dreams of Yitzhak-already-Isaac-already-Irwin Granich. Although Jews Without Money was not about the 1930s and did not emerge from a 1930s sensibility, having been composed in the 1920s, it seemed to many the pre-eminent 1930s novel." (Lauter)
From the onset it must be pointed out that the novel in itself is anchored in a historical background. This was provided by the beginning of the 20th century in which the two main economic doctrines emerged in competition. Therefore, on the one hand, the capitalist approach had proven its worth in the great economic book after the end of the First World War. However, it must be underlined the fact that for Western economies that had been affected by the War, the capitalist reconstruction strategy was in fact the only way in which the economies would be able rise from the disastrous conflagration. On the other hand, the socialist movement had been the...
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