Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 6, 2023 March 30, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Tateh observes that his daughter has begun to mature rapidly; he worries about her safety and development. They travel together to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where there is a citywide strike against the textile mills. The organizers of the strike have set up a network of families where the workers can send their children. Tateh struggles over the decision whether or not to send his daughter away; ultimately he decides to do so. However, at the train station, chaos breaks out, due to an order issued by the city marshal barring all children from leaving Lawrence. The girl remains on the train as it pulls out of the station, but Tateh runs to catch up with it and jumps aboard.
Tateh and the little girl continue their train ride through Boston, New Haven, Westchester county, New York, Newark, and Philadelphia. In Philadelphia Tateh reads of the strike's success, but finds little real hope that conditions would improve for him and his daughter in New York. With that, he concludes they will remain in Lawrence. While still in Philadelphia, Tateh finds a novelty store; there, he presents the owner with his newly made book, a sketchbook with drawings that, when flipped through quickly, set the images in motion. Tateh signs an agreement to produce four additional books such as this one.
As manufacturing and mass production undergoes considerable growth in the United States, Henry Ford takes a huge step toward efficiency in the automobile industry by inventing the assembly line to completion of the Model T vehicle. Soon there ensues a devaluation of the individual as a result of this innovation.
In Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen, Doctorow describes the adventures of Tateh and the little girl as they travel along the Eastern seaboard. An incredibly dynamic character, Tateh here first begins to challenge his old life and seek a better one. He realistically assesses the value of a life such as the one he has had and has shown his daughter, and finds the hardships outweigh the joys. Emotionally, Tateh has begun to see the toll life in New York has taken on him. Doctorow writes of Tateh's thoughts, "This country will not let me breathe." Tateh also experiences a crucial and meaningful feeling of separation from his previous socio-economic position. Doctorow writes, "From this moment, perhaps, Tateh began to conceive of his life as separate from the fate of the working class. I hate machines, he said to his daughter. He stood and she stood and took his hand and together they looked for the exit. The I.W.W. has won, he said. But what has it won? A few more pennies in wages. Will it now own the mills? No." At this point in the novel, Tateh reaches the pinnacle of his disillusionment with the American dream. Although earlier in his life, and in his stay in the United States, he has possessed idealism and a sense of promise, he loses hope as his efforts toward social equality consistently fail to reap substantial rewards. During Tateh's escape from New York, however, Doctorow writes, "he begins to conceive of a better life for himself." By the end of the chapter, in fact, he demonstrates his entrepreneurial abilities through the sale of the movie books he has designed and exhibits a more profound understanding of how to succeed in a capitalist system.
The above passage also touches upon another major theme of the novel, the effect of technology on individual lives. Innovative technology of the turn of the century facilitated many tasks that had previously been painstaking and time- consuming, as well as enabling a far greater efficiency in manufacturing. However, the individual laborer lost much of his value, both in his own mind and in that of his employer. As Doctorow writes at the end of chapter eighteen, "From these principles Ford established the final proposition of the theory of industrial manufacture—not only that the parts of the finished product be interchangeable, but that the men who build the products be themselves interchangeable parts." As in several other instances in the novel, Doctorow here employs the metaphor of imprisonment to describe an emotional and psychological state. As Tateh leaps onto the train that has begun to carry his daughter away from him, Doctorow writes, "He clung to the railing, finally hoisting his knees to the platform overhang and clinging there with his head pressed against the bars like a man in prison begging to be set free." Before he leaves New York City, Tateh's position as a recent Jewish immigrant to the Lower East Side in fact resembles a prison in many ways. The conditions under which he and his daughter live constitute a veritable helplessness, economically and, as a result, physically and emotionally.
Please wait while we process your payment