World Outlook
The first-person narrator shows a very negative image of the city he lives in – and he shows the readers an authentic view on the New York in 1871. He describes the corruption by William Tweed (whose picture we know from Thomas Nast's cartoons, published in Harper's Weekly) and he describes the child poverty, the calamities of the newsboys and a lot of buildings and streets how they looked at this time. He cites Walt Whitman for showing that his New York is another one.
Read more about this topic: The Waterworks
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or outlook:
“But, where the road runs near the stream,
Oft through the trees they catch a glance
Of passing troops in the sun’s beam—
Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!
Forth to the world those soldiers fare,
To life, to cities, and to war!”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“My whole outlook on life changed with those three little words, “The rabbit died.””
—Anonymous Mother. Quoted in When Men Are Pregnant, ch. 5, Jerrold Lee Shapiro (1987)