Topic > leaderless who turned into the abusive, drunken father. Crane interprets Jimmie and Maggie as opposites of each other. The mother and father are portrayed as hypocritical drunken failures and poor role models. Crane skillfully characterizes and stereotypes Maggie's personalities to illustrate the influence of the environment and the miserable conditions in the slums. Maggie "bloomed in a mud puddle" and represented purity in a corrupt world. When she meets up with Pete, she attempts to escape from the world she despises, but instead remains in the slum, unable to escape. Although she is repeatedly abused, Maggie continually picks up the remnants of her life despite being "in a worn and sorry state." Jimmie is seen both in a good light, like his sister, and as an evil and cruel person. At the beginning of the story, he is portrayed as the "little champion" of Rum Alley. However, that description merely hid the brutal fight he was engaged in and the beating he later gave to his sister. Later in the story, Jimmie buys some beer for a tough old woman, but it is taken by her father. Jimmie protests in the name of justice but fails. His crude and abusive relationship with his father severely cripples his chances of becoming a benevolent adult. Instilled with poor values, he did not see the world as good and bad, but rather bad and worse. When he “studied human nature in the mud, and found it no worse than he thought he had reason to believe it,” he expressed his pessimistic and cynical attitude toward the world. Johnson's mother is typical of a drinking, abusive, and neglectful mother. . She represented a hypocritical, industrialized society that neglected its children. When Jimmie tries to bring his mother home after she is kicked out of a bar, "she raises her arm and shakes her big fist at her son's face"..