Judgment Day (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James T. Farrell
- First Published: 1935
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Bildungsroman, Naturalistic literature
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Family or family life, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Social issues, Alienation, Midwest, 1920’s, 1930’s, Chicago, Poverty or poor people, Violence, Lower classes, Moral conditions, Corruption, Catholics or Catholic Church, Heroes or heroism, Ireland or Irish people
- Locales: Chicago, IL
Judgment Day, which begins with a “devotion to be said at the beginning of the mass for the dead,” is the third volume of the Studs Lonigan trilogy. It begins, appropriately, with Shrimp Haggerty's funeral and ends with Studs's death, but the novel also chronicles the death of the American Dream and the fall of the middle-class Irish Catholic community in Chicago. Farrell elaborates on the racism and political intolerance of the first two novels and adds anti-Semitism to the ills that afflict not only his characters but also American society.
In the course of...
[The entire page is 625 words long]
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