Point of View

The story is told from the third person point of view. This third person knows the characters and what they are thinking and feeling. He is the one telling the story of the novel and he is obviously the author of the book. The author is telling the story of life in a Pennsylvania steel town, the town that he grew up in. He is allowing the reader learn of the hardships faced by the immigrants who worked in the steel industry.

Even though the story is fictional, it still describes the living and working conditions of the workers and how they survived the Great Depression. Bell shows what the people had to do in order to survive when work at the mill paid subsistence wages. The story also tells the story of the early days of the labor movement and the attempts to organize the...