The Reality of Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives Essay example -- W

The Reality of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The reality of this book hit the people of New York right between the eyes. Riis was once ascribed the label of lower class society, but worked his way up the ladder of success and entered into a higher class among humanity. Riis tried to write this book with pure objectivity but given his background and emotional connection to the tenement dwellers it was hard to keep that objectivity throughout his book. The references he uses to describe some of the immigrant live-ins were negative and very much stereotypical. For example on page 92 when he’s referring to Italians and their ability to speak, English. â€Å"Unlike the German, who begins learning English the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the Polish Jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the Italian learns slowly, if at all.† By referring to Italians in such a way gives, the effect that he holds a personal grudge against them. He makes it seem like they have personally of fended him by not knowing the English language, when in reality I don’t think he cares at all about what they have to say or what they think about him. He feels that if they (Italians or any of the minority groups) come to the United States they should be well briefed enough know the basic communication needs of his language or don’t come at all because your wasting his time and frankly just being a pain in the ass. He refers to all the immigration groups in a judgmental way. He complains about the intelligence levels of the Italians, how dirty and deceitful the Jews are, and even the immaculate cleanliness of the Chinamen. Although he does possess quite a bit of bigotry that boarders on the line of prejudice when it comes to African Americans he recognizes that they are suffering from racism and he sympathizes with th... ... them enough to care how they live. Once that was done you could take the care they discovered for those people and use it to better their homes. And the city would well be on it’s way to improvement. Riis writes his book effectively and manages to grasp the attention of the nation with his exposà © of real life stories and his snap photography of the tenements of New York City. His point of view wasn’t always objective and he had many stereotypes burned into his brain, but at the same time without some of those preconceived ideas I don’t think his writing would have been as effective as it was. There were real emotions and deep feelings that went into his work. Without his connection to the poverty stricken, he would not have an understanding of where those immigrants were mentally, the pain they were going through and the ‘rough road’ ahead of them. The main purpose of his book was to try to help open the eyes of the people in New York to the conditions in which the immigrants are living. By opening their eyes, he hoped that there would be compassion growing in their hearts and maybe open up to that community and aid in the reconstruction of the tenem ents in which they resided.