Ayn Rand's The Jungle

As the story goes on Ona and her baby Antanas both die. Ona during child birth and Antanas will drowned in front of the house. Jurgis will then move out of the city to the suburbs leave all of his family behind. Later returning to Chicago and getting himself into a lot of trouble with the law. After some time of being in and out of jail Jurgis finally gets a job working at a hotel. He will become back in touch with his family that he left and begin to support them on what he makes by working at the hotel.

Another form of exploitation that doesn’t allow Jurgis and his family to achieve their American dream is the long hours of labor they must work in order to maintain the family alive. These unhealthy long hours of labor that they must work brings the family physical and mental pain. When Jurgis starts to work in the meat packing plant he is exited and happy to have a job, soon after he discovers that he is engaged in unfair labor activities as well as unsafe food handling. In chapter 11 Jurgis suffers from a terrible accident at work. The company doctor tells him that he'll be laid up for months with a severe ankle and foot injury. The accident poses a terrible problem for the family. Without Jurgis' wages, they might starve. “It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the

The Jungle what a strange name for a novel about a crooked government and contaminated meat factories with the rich having monopoly over all the city. See, the whole novel and even the title is an elaborate metaphor and as the novel progresses it becomes clear from where the inspiration for the title came from to see towards the finale of the story. It simply means that everyone is out for themselves and would, in a metaphorical sense, devour the weak and then leave them out to die. The book also has various different metaphors with the most descriptive and the one the stands out the most is one from the beginning of the book describing the cold in a way only a great author could do. It was a way that makes you understand that it was no joke , that they were terrified by the cold for if not careful it would cost them their lives. It describes the cold as a reaper of death as if they were barely slipping through its fingers every night and every day his grasp would tighten on their lives that were already on it's last leg. By putting in this way it makes this the biggest priority for them to survive another day in shambles.

The Jungle demonstrates the exploitation of workers under the capitalist system where the majority of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few while workers like Jurgis are forced to become wage slaves in order to survive. Not only does the owners see workers as “wild beasts” and trap

Jurgis always struggled with money even when Ona was on the verge of dying. Jurgis finally convinced the women but Ona didn’t make it on time because it was too late already. Upton Sinclair shows you the struggle Jurgis went through with money and it wasn’t a fair life for him. When Jurgis lost both Ona and his son Antanas he was begging and a drunk man gave him a 100 dollar bill, that next day he enters a bar to receive change but the bartender tells him he has to buy a drink first, once he does the bartender only gives him 97 cents and refuses to give him his change. Jurgis then gets in a fist fight with him but then is sent to Jail. Once he was a prison he realized the life of crime was the best way to survive as an immigrant, then Jurgis finally loses his hope of getting that American dream he always wanted. Jurgis had a good reason to feel like this because he kept getting turned down by jobs and had nowhere to stay, he was homeless.

“Ona’s heart sank for the house was not as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was different, for one thing and then it did not seem quite as big”(p.35). Jurgis and his family purchased a house thinking it was going to be big and brand new, but turns out it was an old small house that someone has already lived in it. Jurgis’ family also had to work, including the women and children, just so they can pay the rent. The main issue was that the working conditions were terrible for their family. For example, the children would sometimes have to walk around in the cold snow just to sell newspapers and the women would sometimes have their entire factories shut down and lose their jobs. The factories closing did not only affect Jurgis’ family, but also every other worker who worked for that factory.

Poverty was a big factor that often plagued the working class immigrants. One of the main characters, Marija Berczynskas, goes through multiple jobs throughout the duration of The Jungle. Near the end of the story, once Jurgis returns to his family from his journey in the country, he finds out that Marija had gotten a job as a prostitute. She accepted the job to financially support what is left of the family and to allow Teta Elzbieta’s children to go to school. However, because Marija is addicted to dope and cannot stop, she is not able to leave prostitution. Once Teta Elzbieta’s brother, Jonas, disappears, two of

“The Jungle”portrays the harsh conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry in the early 1900’s. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite recently emigrated from Lithuania to Chicago in search of a better life. The conditions were the cause of Jurgis’s injury to his ankle, which led to his frustrating unemployment. Jurgis and Ona, a couple who planned on getting married, struggled throughout their time Chicago due the treatment of immigrants. Jurgis always prevailed and assured his wife that things would soon be better as he had believed in the American dream.

In the novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, the butchered animals within the factory represent the miserable lives of the immigrants and poor people of Chicago. Sinclair creates this representation through paralleling the experiences of the animals and the people. Both the animals and the people are oblivious as to their ultimate fate; the animals do not know that the factory is the path to their death, and the immigrants do not know of all the calamities that will befall them in the United States. The novel creates parallelism in the treatment of the animals and the people; both the animals and the people are treated in atrocious ways. Finally, there is considerable similarity between the indignant deaths of the animals and the people. Thus, from the beginning of the animals’ lives in the factory and the immigrants’ lives in the United States to the death of both the animals and the immigrants and poor people, there is resemblance between the animals and the people.

“In twentieth-century America the history of poverty begins with most working people living on the edge of destitution, periodically short of food, fuel, clothing, and shelter” (Poverty in 20th Century America). Poverty possesses the ability to completely degrade a person, as well as a family, but it can also make that person and family stronger. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a family of immigrants has to live in severe poverty in Packingtown, a suburb of Chicago. The poverty degrades the family numerous times, and even brings them close to death. Originally the family has each other to fall back on, but eventually members of the family must face numerous struggles on their own, including “hoboing it” and becoming a prostitute. The

Jurgis and his family were faced with many predicaments related to these poor surroundings and circumstances. The family hastily saw that they must enter the competition forced upon them in a social Darwinist fashion. When he first arrived in Packingtown, Jurgis found work quickly in the meat packing industry because of his strong, young stature. As the years went by, however, and he grew plagued with injuries and financial troubles, Jurgis found work to be evermore difficult to obtain and hold. The social system cracked down on the family and offered nowhere for the Rudkus' to turn for help.

Connor who is Ona’s boss has taken her to downtown and has been blackmailing Ona into becoming a prostitute after her hours as a factory laborer so that her family will not be ruined and they can keep their jobs."We could never get anything to do--here--again. He--he meant it--he would have ruined us”. (Pg,151). Jurgis can not control himself and attacks Connor which leads him to be in jail. They lost almost everything from Old Antanas to their house and even Ona later on. Jurgis would not go to jail if Ona did not suffer from sexual abuse and their family would not gradually used up, tortured, and destroyed, because the Socialism’s principles are equality of all people, cooperation is better than competition and help for those who need it. It fulfill capitalism’s failure which it only provides goods and services if there is a market for them and thus, does not have potential to satisfy human needs.( "What Socialism Is." World Socialist Movement. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014). It will provide jurgis’s family help, the right to access all of the sources and especially

The children of the family also try to help out and make ends meet, but then Jurgis gets a rolled ankle and must take days off of work. He comes to find that his place has been taken and thus has difficulty finding more work. Ona has also begun to help out, but eventually comes in contact with a man who rapes her daily after work. Jurgis goes mad and is sent to jail following a fight between Jurgis and that man.

How could all these people be so unhappy and fragile? After all, they had a job, which is all they needed to be happy. However, it would take less than a year for Jurgis to come to realize the harsh

Living in the bottom of the class system, capitalism takes a toll on Jurgis and his family. His