Ashes Of Roses

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2002

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-20

Chapters 21-26

Chapters 27-32

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

The American Dream and Its Challenges

Millions of immigrants have traveled to America in hopes of a better life; however, their dreams of what their new lives will be like have not always matched up with reality, and the author takes care to depict this aspect of immigration in Ashes of Roses, for while Rose and most of her family believe in the promise of America, they also find many challenges there. This theme is first invoked when Rose recalls Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” which is etched on the base of the Statue of Liberty. As their ship pulls into the harbor, she muses on the famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (Lazarus, Emma. “The New Colossus.” Poetry Foundation, Lines 10-11). Rose sees her own family in these words, but her tone is more ironic than it is reverent, for she states, “Well, we were poor, all right, and after two weeks crammed into the bottom of a boat with Joseph screamin’ his fool head off, we certainly qualified as tired, huddled masses” (9). Whereas the sentiment in the poem is one of welcome and comfort, the family mostly finds their treatment by Americans to be less than warm, and Rose’s wry interpretation of the poem foreshadows this discovery. Before they even set foot officially in the new land, they experience and witness heartbreak with Joseph being denied entry and Da opting to return to Ireland with him.

However, despite her own sorrow at being parted from Da, Rose maintains the vision of America as the land of opportunity, which her father had, too. He believed “he could make a better life for us in America, where his brother had arrived with twenty dollars and had climbed his way up from a dockworker to a politician” (106-107). Stories like that inspire many immigrants to make the grueling journey to Ellis Island during this time frame, believing that with a little hard work, they can raise themselves up out of poverty. When a police officer gives the family some money to take the train to Uncle Patrick’s home, his act of kindness seems to confirm the legends of America, and Rose thinks, “The stories we’d heard back in Ireland were true. The streets in America were indeed paved with gold” (38). However, her view of the so-called “American Dream” is considerably tarnished when she soon discovers that money is not easy to come by. As the irate cobbler tells her when she asks for a job, “There’s a boatload of you greenhorns landing every day, and you all think you’re going to make a fortune in America. Well, don’t hold your breath, girlie, because it’s not going to happen” (68).

Despite such setbacks, Rose continues to see America as far more than a greater chance to make money; she is determined to set her own course for the future and create more opportunities for herself. Upon her arrival, she feels hopeful, saying, “A whole new world was stretchin’ out before me, and I wanted a chance to savor it before I was weighed down with babies like Ma” (15). However, the first step of savoring her new world involves meeting the family’s basic needs so that they can regain a measure of dignity away from those like Elsa who see her family “as foreigners, and dirty ones at that” (50). As Rose confronts the prejudices both within and beyond the immediate community of immigrants, she realizes that the welcome of the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty does not reflect how ordinary Americans and more established immigrants treat her.

Moreover, it soon becomes apparent that the American Dream does not materialize for everyone who seeks it. Because Ma cannot cope with all the change and challenge of being in a new country, she tells Patrick, “We’re like fish floppin’ on a beach here. If we stay any longer, we’ll perish for sure” (104). She yearns for the comfort of her familiar home and soon finds a reason to return there. Similarly, Mr. Garoff also returns to his homeland after the death of his daughter, seeing the promise of America as a broken one. As Leah says of him, “‘There’s nothing here for him now. […] He said America’s streets weren’t paved in gold after all” (238). In contrast to fellow immigrants who decide to seek a different path, Rose makes the decision to stay in America even after the devastating factory fire, and this choice shows that she now sees her new country with open eyes, not through a haze of myth. Her entrance to her new home and new life hint at how her American life will develop, for she states, “I had thought the gateway to America would be more grand […], with trumpets and fireworks to usher us in. Instead, nobody bothered to look up […] But it didn’t matter to me. We were in America at last” (31). By the end of the novel, Rose learns that America is not a mythic place where success comes easily. It is also not a place that cares about the welfare of one young immigrant. However, it is a place with more opportunities, and Rose learns to make her own fanfare by seizing new opportunities.

Social Inequalities Among Immigrants

From the very beginning of the novel, the author highlights the multitude of prejudices that divide immigrants from the existing population, as well as from each other. Even more established immigrants look down upon newer arrivals, just as prejudices exist between immigrants from different nations and even between different generations of the same family. Thus, Rose soon learns that the “huddled masses” of immigrants coming to America often treated differently, and they also have contrasting notions of how best to live in their new country.

As Rose’s apparent inexperience bars her from one job opportunity after another, she comes to wonder if “everyone in New York [could] tell that [she] had just stepped off the boat from Ireland” (74), and she is utterly baffled by the sense of shame that seems to accompany the status of “greenhorn.” The derision that new arrivals face becomes immediately apparent when Trudy practically spits out the words “immigrants” and “sweatshop” upon seeing Rose, Maureen, and Ma making paper flowers in her home. Although Trudy is descended from German immigrants herself, her status as a well-established immigrant gives her a feeling of superiority over the new arrivals. Rose also learns that the term “greenhorn” connotes being someone who is “ignorant about America” (84), according to Elsa.

When Rose later learns from Tessa that different nationalities have received a poorer reception than others at various times, the author uses this realization to highlight the many layers of bias that exist in the United States. As Tessa informs Rose, “Italians are not respected here. But it will change. They say there was a time when everyone looked down on the Irish. Now they run the whole city” (80). While this perspective has little relevance to Rose’s everyday struggles, it does imply that she will face less discrimination than immigrants from other countries.

Inequalities and imbalances occur even within families, for both Rose and Gussie find themselves at odds with a parent who emigrated at or near the same time as they did. Similarly, both young women acknowledge a difference borne of their relative ages and individual ambitions. For example, Rose wants more for herself than the traditional path of marriage and children, even though that was the path that Ma took. Likewise, Gussie has departed from traditional roles by becoming the caretaker of her father and of a labor movement, even though her father still believes that a man should take care of her. Both young women’s parents are the type to keep their heads down to avoid problems, but both daughters speak out. When Rose goes to confront Moscovitz, she sees how she is straying from Ma’s instruction, stating “Ma had always taught me to stay out of trouble. Now here I was brazenly askin’ for it” (142). Gussie is an even bolder example of that, having been arrested in a protest march. She says of Mr. Garoff, “This sort of thing just isn’t done by women in the old country. Father thinks I should keep quiet, but when I see something wrong, I want to change it” (139).

Her sentiments highlight the fact that the younger generations in immigrant families often lead the way in forging a new American life. This can create a power-shift in the dynamics of the family. Gussie ends up supporting her father, which hurts his pride. Similarly, when Rose gets a job first and then gets frustrated when Ma deviates from her instructions, she realizes that she’s “about to take a tongue-lashin’ from Ma” (98). However, Ma stays quiet, perhaps realizing that Rose understands the situation better than she does. When Ma departs from America without her two oldest children, she cries bitterly, “Ye see what ye’ve done to me, America? Ye’ve taken my two sweet daughters and turned them into headstrong fools. What will ye do to me next?” (113). In her eyes, America has already changed her children, and she does not want the country to take anything else away from her. As each character makes life-changing choices that best fit with their views, it becomes clear that although immigrant experiences share many commonalities, every person who comes to America must contend with their own set of challenges and either accept or reject the pressure to assimilate into the dominant culture.

Perceptions of Class Difference

Unlike earlier Irish immigrants, the Nolans do not immigrate to America to escape famine or extreme poverty. Ma claims that they had a good life in Ireland, though it was simple, especially compared to people who lived in the lanes of Limerick. However, Rose’s perception of Ireland highlights the relativity of such judgments, for she states, “In Limerick, we thought we were lucky to have a tap right in the yard, instead of havin’ to carry water up flights of stairs, the way they did in the tenements” (48-49). This state of affairs differs wildly from the indoor plumbing that Uncle Patrick and his family enjoy. Thus, upon her arrival in New York, Rose realizes that there are many more gradations of class, and she gets her first taste of the realities of class struggle.

This dynamic is introduced in an arena that the Nolans least expect to find it: Uncle Patrick’s home. Although they expect to be received with the respect due to fellow family members, they are immediately subjected to the disdain of Patrick’s wife and children, who view them as impoverished and therefore slovenly. Rose is confronted with this uncomfortable social reality when she overhears Trudy worrying about the vermin they might have picked up on their voyage in steerage. Trudy says, “That feather bed should be burned before it unloads its cargo of fleas and lice into our flat. […] And […] they’re dirty. They smell like goats. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a bar of soap” (47). This comment enrages Rose because it is an insult to their character and reflects Trudy’s ignorance of the hardships they have endured.

The cold reception that the Nolans receive upon their arrival foreshadows the difficulties they encounter when they try to find work and assimilate into the local culture. At the “snooty” department store, for example, the saleswoman “look[s] with disdain at [Rose’s] homespun dress, even though it [is] clean and freshly ironed” (70), and Rose realizes that appearances matter more than skill or character. Seeing the elegantly dressed customers, Rose perceives a hierarchy of class with the wealthy customer on top, the smartly dressed salesperson, and the skilled person who makes the dress at the very the bottom of the social hierarchy. She muses, “It seemed to me that the person who could make a fine dress was just as good if not better than the person who merely sold it. After all, if the dress was poorly made, the saleswoman would be hard-pressed to convince anyone to buy it” (70). It is an unfairness, but not the last one that she will notice. When Elsa and her mother forbid her from going to a dangerous neighborhood to work, Rose perceives another fine distinction of class. Though she is poor by American standards, her family is not yet desperate for any money they can get; because they have a financial safety net in the form of Uncle Patrick, Rose has the flexibility to work elsewhere. Her reality therefore conflicts with that of workers like Tessa, whose circumstances do not allow them to be selective about where they work.

Rose also gets a lesson in different types of upper-class people when Gussie tells her about the big strike that happened two years earlier, in which thousands of women, most of whom were poor and working-class immigrants, took to the streets to demand better conditions and fairer pay. She tells her, “’We even had the support of some of the most important women in New York. It’s one thing to have poor working girls in a picket line, but when you have society ladies, well, that’s a news story’” (139-140). The society ladies she means were known in the press as the “Mink Brigade,” for the upper-class women joined the striking workers because the police would be less likely to beat or arrest them, and if they did, there would be more of an outcry than if the same treatment were meted out to the majority of the strikers. (Wagner, Ella. “Mink Brigade.” National Park Service, 22 Mar. 2021). Additionally, when Rose first goes to work at the Triangle, she sees some handsome young men and finds out that they are students at nearby New York University, not workers. Her companion sniffs, “They think they’re too good to give us as much as a how-d’ye-do, just because their daddies have enough money to send them to a ritzy school” (157). However, these same students save Maureen and others by putting across a ladder from their building to the tenth floor of the burning building. Rose realizes then that her view of the wealthy may also have been limited.