City of Orphans

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2000

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Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8 Summary

In the Lower East Side of New York City in 1893, 13-year-old newspaper salesperson, or “newsie,” Maks Geless, a Danish immigrant, is selling copies of The World proclaiming a murder at the Waldorf Astoria. In a flashback to five days earlier, on October 9, 1893, Maks is finishing a day of hawking his papers on the street corner. He must purchase the day’s bundle with his own money and will earn a meager eight cents for the day if he sells them all. The “Great Panic of 1893” has landed Maks’s family as well as many others on hard times. His work as a newsie is valuable to their survival. As he attempts to sell his last paper with headlines announcing the trial of political boss Joe Gorker, Bruno, leader of the Plug Ugly Gang and known for bullying other newsies, lurks nearby. Maks weighs his options, calculating the impossible distance he still has left to travel home, and decides to run.

Maks stares down Bruno and five more gang members. The overcrowded and treacherous streets are a place one might find dangerous for a child. This is a time and place where children are not protected and must fend for themselves. Even law enforcement is too corrupt to help them. Maks escapes to a narrow alley that ends in a fence too high for him to scale. He sees a body tangled in the debris. He is uncertain if it is a corpse or just a sleeping drunkard, but at the moment all his attention goes to the imminent collision with Bruno and his cronies.

Bruno demands Maks hand over his earnings while his pals join in taunting and jeering. Bruno finds no sympathy, saying, “Hard times for everyone. And that includes me” (13). Maks and Bruno fight as the gang members cheer. Maks cries out for help, and the mysterious human mound awakens and attacks Bruno with a stick, leaving him shocked and stumbling out of the alley. Maks’s rescuer is a tall, lean, and utterly filthy girl named Willa. The club she uses is actually a large tree branch. Maks thanks her for ridding him of his attackers. She is an orphan surviving alone on the streets. Maks notes that her speech does not match her unkempt appearance. She shows him her living quarters between the two fences. She explains how she keeps warm at night yet avoids Maks’s inquiries about her family. He offers for her to join him for dinner at home.

Maks further explains why Bruno and the Plug Uglies are after him and asserts that Bruno is being protected and paid to bully other newsies. Maks warns Willa that they will be after her now and to be on her guard. Willa explains her family is gone and she makes a living working at the city dump obtaining food from the church breadline. Willa asks Maks about his family, and he is proud to share about his mother, father, and five siblings. His father has a good job at the shoe factory, and his mother does laundry for Bothwell’s store, but it is his sister Emma of whom he is most proud. She works at the famed Waldorf Hotel. His sister Agnes is taking night classes after working illegally during the day at the factory with her father. Willa is not certain of her age and has never attended school. Maks has lived in a tenement on Birmingham Street, a building that houses almost 200 residents, for eight years.

Chapters 1-8 Analysis

Avi introduces young protagonist Maks and the setting of New York City, specifically the heavily immigrant-populated Lower East Side, at the height of the Industrial Revolution. The omniscient narrator explicates the direness of the era by mentioning the lack of care given to the safety and well-being of children. Maks lives in a time before wide-sweeping social reform, including child labor and protection laws.

Maks lives in a city at the center of a crisis, both societal and economic. The Panic of 1893 was brought on by a confluence of events: Over-speculation in the stock market, plummeting prices, and crop failures in the South sent the nation into a dangerous economic spiral in which unemployment rates soared. Lack of governmental relief and social systems to support those out of work led to long bread lines, and many people were left homeless. The children in Avi’s fictional New York, although often abandoned to fight for their own survival, inject spirit and energy into what could otherwise be a dark, Dickensian tale. The author provides hope not only through the children but also through the motif of community. Maks is often drawn out of his present struggle to survive into a quiet reverie of sights, sounds, and smells in the diverse and ebullient Lower East Side. It is also home to many immigrant-owned businesses for which Maks holds much respect. From the horse stables to a print shop, and from a saloon to a fish shop, he gazes around at the menagerie that is the Lower East Side. The city is crowded with people from all walks of life, all meandering through the congested street with a different need or purpose. Some are there to peddle their wares, and others are there to shop, although Maks notes the poor quality of most of the goods for sale. Maks also notices the diversity of the city dwellers, which is consistent with the vast influx of immigrants New York experienced at this time. Maks registers the polluted air, a miasma of smoke and human and animal refuse.

The rapid industrialization of the 18th and 19th centuries led not only to sweeping economic problems but also to overcrowded, cramped, polluted cities where raw sewage ran through the streets and factories belched pollution into the air and water. Crime was rampant as desperate citizens fought to hold onto what little they had or scrap for what they did not, and law enforcement paid little attention due to corruption and greed. During times of economic and social crisis, lack of education, proper nutrition, and solid, stable adult supervision can inflict lasting trauma on the youngest in society. Maks is just old enough to understand his lot as a poor, working-class immigrant but is also bright and entrepreneurial enough to fight hard to preserve his newspaper-selling business. Selling papers not only help his family make ends meet each month, but also gives Maks a sense of ingenuity and purpose despite the desultory conditions that surround him.

Avi highlights the direness of the situation in the introduction of Willa, Maks’s unlikely savior. She is the walking embodiment of the American crisis. She is filthy, homeless, orphaned, and depressed and feels as discarded as the piles of trash she makes her bed in each night. She is reluctant to trust Maks because her life is about survival and she has learned not to trust anyone. Her constant shifting eyes, although they make Maks nervous, clue the reader into her past and suggest she has experienced violence and trauma. Although she and Maks share the common bond of immigrant status, that is where the similarities end. Maks lavishes in the love and security of a large, close family. Willa is alone. Maks has a home, although overcrowded and lacking in necessities like running water; Willa sleeps in an alley. The trash that serves as her bedding is a metaphor for her status. She has literally become the refuse of a society captivated by capitalistic greed unconcerned about those in need. Maks serves as her foil, as he remains hopeful and optimistic for the future despite his lower-class status while Willa has become so fearful and traumatized that she cannot even have a conversation. She has resorted to animal-like instincts to survive, as symbolized by the stick she carries for protection.