Bread Givers Research Papers

America is a nation built up by immigrants.  The most dramatic wave came in the late 19th century and early part of the 20th century, as millions of Eastern and Southern Europeans flooded into America in search of a better life.  Poles, Russians, Slovaks, Jews, Lithuanians, Greeks, Italians, and others filed through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, and into Industrial America.  Often, their transition was a difficult one.  They faced prejudice, discrimination, blacklisting, and meager living conditions.  Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers (1925) is the story of one immigrant family’s struggle in America.

From the opening chapter, the reader is told that this is a family that must struggle to make ends meet in the new world.  Economics is perhaps their primary concern.  Sara, then ten years old, is peeling potatoes for dinner.  Her older sister Bessie comes home, exhausted and frustrated because she has been unable to find work.  The entire family is dependent upon the wages that Bessie can bring in.  The alternative is being thrown out of their home by theit landlord, something that has happened before to this family.

America was at the height of the Industrial Revolution during the time period of the novel.  A massive labor pool was needed, but so many immigrants came into the country that jobs often became scarce.  Bessie tells of a mad struggle of the crowd at a shop where “Girls Wanted” is advertised.  Sara’s chores consist of going through the neighborhood ash cans and empty lots for scraps of coal and wood so that the family can have heat.  She is embarrassed and ashamed to do this, feeling like a thief.  Ultimately, their father’s solution to the family’s economic woes is to marry off his older daughters to unsavory men.

What is most striking about Sara’s story is that she makes a conscious effort to overcome the poverty of her family and the domination of her father.  She decides to become a schoolteacher.  She remembers a story from the Sunday paper of a girl not unlike herself: “A girl—slaving away in a shop.  Her hair was already turning gray….  Then suddenly she began to study in the night school, then college.  And worked and studied, on and on, till she became a teacher in the schools”.  In this new desire to improve her life, Sara is both typical of many immigrants and different from first generation immigrants.

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A research paper is an in-depth examination of Bread Givers. More than just an overview of what was learned on Bread Givers, like a term paper is, a research paper contains analysis of Bread Givers along the lines of organizational theory and relevant published material. Research papers are highly analytical and can often be more than 8 to 10 pages. The key to a good research project is the examination of recently published journal articles and peer-reviewed material on the Bread Givers chosen. Like the name implies, research papers are exactly that, a paper that examines the information that can be found on Bread Givers.