Hungarian Immigrants To Canada Essay Research Paper

Hungarian Immigrants To Canada Essay, Research Paper

To what extent does the novel or memoir you have chosen provide useful insights into the topic mentioned.

John Marlyn’s ‘Under the Ribs of Death’ is concerned with the life of Sandor Hunyadi, a young Hungarian living in Canada. The novel follows his life as a young boy, and then as a young man in the years before the Great Depression. Sandor’s efforts to find his place within Canadian society are a dominant theme of the novel, as is the problem of poverty. Perhaps the all-encompassing term which would define Sandor’s life is struggle.

Sandor’s home life can be seen in terms of a constant struggle against poverty. Like many other Hungarian immigrants, Sandor’s father is a janitor, a low-paid, menial job. Hungarians brought with them few skills fit for the Canadian job market, and were often employed in jobs with low wages, and were highly exploited by the Canadian employers. Sandor himself was shocked and upset when he heard his father being talked down to by his employer, but this type of treatment was common for Hungarian immigrants to Canada, who were subjected to prejudice and hate. Although being shocked by his father’s treatment, Sandor is very aware of the prejudice against immigrants. He shows this from an early age when he tells his parents that “the only people who count are the English ’cause when you’re English it’s the same as bein’ Canadian”, and because of this prejudice he is determined to demonstrate that he is as Canadian as everyone else. His pride of sharing his birthday with Victoria Day is clear evidence that he is proud to be Canadian, as is his absolute fervour over obtaining a flag. The most obvious symbol of Sandor’s desire to assimilate is his decision to change his name. Sandor’s name has always caused him problems with the Canadians, and from his encounter with Mrs Crawford when he became Alex Humphrey, to his later decision to become Alex Hunter, he has always felt that his foreign name was a hindrance to his future. Marlyn couples his description of Sandor’s name change with the image of the businessmen dining in the hotel, the men who Sandor so admired and wished to become. This implied that Sandor felt his name was an infringement of his chances of progress and achieving his dream of becoming a successful businessman who works hard and can afford the luxuries that he was denied as a child. This symbolic change highlights the prejudice that many of the Hungarian immigrants encountered whilst in Canada.

Sandor’s Anglicisation of his name demonstrates not only the prejudice that many Hungarians experienced; it is also closely linked to the importance of language to immigrants. Whilst Hungarian adults continued to use Hungarian, but to a greater extent German within their communities, Sandor and his friends converse only in English, and Sandor himself could remember ’scarcely enough [Hungarian] to ask for a crust of bread’ . Sandor’s lack of knowledge of his native language is justified by Onkel Janos, with his ‘this is an English speaking country, isn’t it. What does the boy want with Hungarian.’. This kind of attitude is more consistent with second-generation immigrants, who tended to assimilate themselves more readily with the language and traditions of the host country. However, there were also immigrants like Onkel Janos who were aware that the more one was assimilated to Canadian life, the more successful one would be. Language was always a source of tension in Canadian society, and the sudden influx of immigrants from Europe during the early years exacerbated this. Politicians saw language as the unifying force for all these ‘new’ Canadians. Woodsworth in 1905 that ‘If Canada is to become in any real sense a nation, if our people are to become one people, we must have one language. The public school is the most important factor in transforming the foreigners into Canadians’ . This principle was a crucial factor in turning young Hungarians into young Canadians, and can easily be seen in Sandor’s case, with his national pride and his mastery of English. It should be noted that Sandor also speaks German, such as during his negotiations with the Kostanuiks. He also hugely enjoyed the traditional Hungarian celebrations for Onkel Janos’s arrival. This demonstrates that despite his assimilation, he has not turned his back completely on his home traditions. The Hungarian communities tried to make sure that traditions were continued in Canada. These traditions were sustained for the first couple of generations of Hungarians, but as these families became richer and moved away from the immigrant areas the traditions faded from memory and the former immigrants became Canadians.

The Hungarian communities were very important for the new immigrants. They were places where they could feel comfortable and secure, a jumping-off point for the new arrivals. One of the first places a new immigrant would live would be a boarding house, or a burdosgazda, like the one the Hunyadi family ran. These establishments could be lucrative since they utilized all the family’s spare time labour , and it is a constant source of Sandor’s frustration that his father will not charge his boarders. As well as providing a source of income for Hungarian families, these boarding houses presented the new arrivals with an instant surrogate family and community. Through this establishment, the new arriva