Character guide

Jurgis Rudkus

major

Also known as Jurgis, II Jurgis, VI Jurgis, Poor Jurgis, April Jurgis, Comrade Jurgis

Jurgis comes to Chicago's stockyards from a forest village, newly married to Ona and convinced his broad back and tireless energy will buy them a future. He is the first man picked from the crowd at Brown and Company's time station, and he takes it as proof that the pessimists are simply weaker men. That confidence — boyish, generous, and untested — is the engine of the family's hopes and the thing the yards will steadily work on.

Ona Rudkus

major

Also known as Little Ona

Ona is the reason Jurgis left Lithuania at all, and in Packingtown she becomes the family's most fragile wage-earner, a ham-wrapper whose earnings the household cannot do without. She is gentle, frightened, and increasingly secretive, and when she fails to come home one evening Jurgis's frantic search through the yards turns his trust into dread. Her deception — whatever it hides — is the hinge on which his faith in the world begins to turn.

Marija Berczynskas

supporting

Also known as Cousin Marija, Marija, Poor Marija

Marija runs the Rudkus wedding like a general, bellowing orders in Lithuanian and Polish and dragging half of Ashland Avenue along in her wake. She works in the canning factory, earns the steadiest money in the household, and spends much of it on the children despite her own plans to marry Tamoszius in the spring. Her warmth and blunt competence make her the family's practical backbone — and the person whose future the yards will test hardest.

Elzbieta Rudkus

supporting

Also known as Teta Elzbieta, Teta, poor Elzbieta

Teta Elzbieta keeps the family's rooms, stretches their wages, and carries the quiet weight of every crisis, from Ona's disappearance to Jurgis's arrest. She appears in the police court with little Kotrina, afraid to signal to him, and her helplessness there measures how little the law offers people like them. Her endurance — unglamorous, unending — is the domestic counterweight to Jurgis's rage and the reason the family survives as long as it does.

Tamoszius Kuszleika

supporting

Also known as Tamoszius

Tamoszius earns real money playing at parties and festivals, and he courts Marija by bringing his fiddle everywhere and inviting the family along. He is excitable and possessive, ready to throw the orchestra out of tune if another man so much as puts an arm around her, but his devotion is genuine and the two plan a spring wedding and a fixed-up garret. His music gives the household its one reliable taste of beauty, and his courtship gives Marija a future worth protecting.

Antanas Rudkus

supporting

Also known as Dede Antanas, old Antanas, Old Antanas

Dede Antanas left a small cleared farm in the Imperial Forest to make the journey with Jurgis, and in Packingtown he is the household's most vulnerable member — old, slow, and desperate to contribute. He scrapes for work in the yards, and his decline is one of the first signs that the city's promises do not extend to men like him. His presence forces Jurgis to see that strength and will are not the only things the yards consume.

Stanislovas

supporting

Also known as little Stanislovas, Little Stanislovas

He belongs to the crowded family whose survival depends on every pair of hands, even the smallest, and his wages are counted before he understands what they cost. The tension he embodies is simple and terrible: a child asked to be a breadwinner in a place that grinds children down. His presence in the early household scenes keeps the reader aware that the Rudkus gamble in Packingtown stakes not just the adults but the young.

Jokubas Szedvilas

supporting

Also known as Jokubas, ponas Jokubas, Szedvilas

He is the family's first bridge to Chicago: a small shopkeeper with many acquaintances, including the special policeman who doles out jobs at Durham's. His pride in the packing district — he claims the landscape even though the packers own the land — sits uneasily beside the grimness of what he is showing. Through him the newcomers get their first jobs and their first tour of the wonder and horror of the yards, and his cautious, well-connected optimism sets the tone of the family's early hopes.

Mike Scully

supporting

Also known as Scully

Scully rules the ward through the War-Whoop League, a club of "Indians" who fight, drink, and vote on election day, and a note signed by him is equal to a job in the packinghouses. He is the story's early portrait of how the machine works: he owns the dump, the brick factory, the ice, and the men who inspect the city's sewers, and he is admired as "the people's man" even as he fleeces them. His power explains why the Rudkus family's struggles are never merely personal — the game is rigged from the top, and he is the man holding the dice.

Jack Duane

supporting

Also known as Duane

Duane is a man who once had a family and gave it up, and he tells Jurgis plainly that this is no world in which a man has any business with one. His openness — he shares names, places, triumphs, and griefs with the wondering newcomer — makes him the most human figure in the city's criminal drainage, and his creed that "one thing leads to another" quietly reframes Jurgis's ruin as something the system produced. He matters because he offers Jurgis a way of seeing his own fall, and a path out of innocence that the reader watches him consider.

Madame Haupt

minor

A wealthy woman who employs Ona as a seamstress.

Master Freddie

minor

Also known as Freddie, Master Frederick

The son of a wealthy packer who pursues Ona.

Jonas

minor

Also known as Brother Jonas

Elzbieta's brother who lives with the family and works in the yards.

Aniele Jukniene

minor

Also known as Aniele

A neighbor who rents rooms to the Rudkus family.

Jadvyga Marcinkus

minor

Also known as Jadvyga

A young Lithuanian woman who works with Ona and becomes her friend.

Grandmother Majauszkiene

minor

Also known as old Grandmother Majauszkiene, Majauszkiene

An elderly Lithuanian woman who advises the family on housing.

Nicholas Schliemann

minor

Also known as Schliemann, Dr. Schliemann, Comrade Schliemann

A brilliant socialist intellectual who debates philosophy.

Harper

minor

Also known as Bush Harper

A detective and political operative working for the packers.

Mr. Connor

minor

Also known as Connor, Phil Connor

A foreman at the packing plant who abuses Ona.

Ostrinski

minor

Also known as Comrade Ostrinski

A Polish socialist who educates Jurgis about the movement.

Kristoforas

minor

Also known as little Kristoforas

Elzbieta's disabled young son who dies tragically.

Kotrina

minor

Also known as little Kotrina

Elzbieta's young daughter who helps at home.

Juozapas

minor

Also known as Little Juozapas

One of Elzbieta's younger children.

Tommy Hinds

minor

Also known as Hinds, Tommy Hinds

A socialist hotel owner who shelters Jurgis.

Justice Callahan

minor

A corrupt judge who presides over Jurgis's trial.

Miss Henderson

minor

Also known as Henderson

A supervisor at the canning factory where Marija works.

Alena Jasaityte

minor

Also known as Alena, Jasaityte

A young Lithuanian woman who works in the yards.

Brown

minor

A political operative working for the packers.

Mr. Maynard

minor

Also known as Maynard

A wealthy man who hires Jurgis as a tram conductor.

Buck Halloran

minor

Also known as Halloran

A political thug who works for Scully.

Tommy Finnegan

minor

Also known as Tom Finnegan

A fellow worker at the packing plant.

Mr. Harmon

minor

A foreman at the steel plant where Jurgis briefly works.

Mary Dennis

minor

Also known as Mary

A neighbor woman who helps Elzbieta.

Sebastijonas Szedvilas

minor

Also known as Little Sebastijonas

Jokubas's young son.

Young Fisher

minor

Also known as Fisher

A wealthy young man who attends socialist meetings.

Lucas

minor

Also known as Comrade Lucas

A socialist comrade who speaks at meetings.

Doyle

minor

Also known as Scotty Doyle

A fellow worker who befriends Jurgis in the yards.

Goldberger

minor

A Jewish tailor who employs Jurgis briefly.

Vilimas

minor

One of Elzbieta's sons who sells newspapers.

Juozas Raczius

minor

Also known as Juozas

A Lithuanian man who works in the yards.

Mikolas

minor

A Lithuanian worker at the packing plant.