English All Semester 2

In the “the Jungle” the author Upton Sinclair uses ethos,pathos and imagery to expose the meat packing industry of its disgusting ways to the public’s eye. The first pathos the rhetorical device responsible for getting people into their feeling more than in their thoughtful minds. For example Mr. Sinclair takes full advantage of this when explains the meat packing plant products are not what you think they are. In this quote “there would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.”

In the first place, Sinclair exposes imagery in order to illustrate the very unsanitary conditions found in these factories. He is able to make the readers picture the gross factory floors or the rotted meat. His strong choice of words enable the readers the ability to see what and why something has to change. For example in paragraph three, “There would be meat stored in great piles in the room; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats” (Sinclair 3). This quote paints a picture in the readers’ minds of just how bad the conditions are in these factories. Also in paragraph 3, “Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water-and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast” (Sinclair 3).The right word choice can make the readers picture the water dripping or the rats scattering. Sinclair’s word choice is so strong and detailed that readers can picture exactly what that would look like.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written to expose the brutality faced by the workers in the meatpacking industry. Sinclair wanted to show people what was really going on in the factory because few people were informed about these companies work conditions. He wanted to show the public that meat was “ diseased, rotten, and contaminated” (Willie).” This revelation shocked the, public which later led to the creation of the federal laws on food and safety. Sinclair strongly shows the failure of capitalism in the meatpacking industry which he viewed as inhumane, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent (Willie).”

This endeavor lead to the creation of the FDA and also the requirement that companies list what is going in the food that they are purchasing. Document B states the ill conditions meat was placed in prior to the chopping of the meat: “Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty floors where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in dark ill-ventilated rooms…”(Neill-Reynolds Report,

Upton Sinclair is most known for his criticisms of the meat packaging industry in his book The Jungle. For close to 2 months, Sinclair worked in a Chicago meat package plant in order to expose the hidden truths of the industry. This was one of the first examples of a journalist immersing themselves in the material coved in

Sinclair’s writing started to become very eminent in the early 1900’s, and by the age of 16 his book The Jungle changes the food industry forever. In 1905 Sinclair was hired to work in “Packingtown” Chicago for a meat processing company for a pay of $500 ( $13,513.51 today’s money) (Upton Sinclair Hits Readers in the Stomach). For two months Sinclair worked in the meatpacking industry, afterwards, he went into solitude for nine months to write about the details of the industry. “The meat would be shoveled into carts,

This book was called The Jungle and its purpose was to bring attention to the hardships of plant workers (Constitutional Rights Foundation). However, when the public read his book, they were more appalled at the possibility of consuming contaminated meat than the hardships of plant workers, and so demanded that President Theodore Roosevelt and Congress do something about it (Laws.com). In response, President Roosevelt commissioned labor commissioner Charles P. Neill and social worker James Bronson Reynolds to investigate Sinclair's claims. What they found was exactly what Sinclair had described (Constitutional Rights Foundation). After the President and Congress heard of these deplorable conditions, they went to work creating a law to improve the working conditions in both slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. What they came up with was the Federal Meat Inspection Act (Constitutional Rights Foundation). The act improved conditions in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants by forcing slaughterhouses and meat processing plants to practice clean and sanitary handling and preparation of meat. It also required inspections of livestock and animal carcasses, as well as monitoring of slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, among other things (USLegal, Incorporated). All this helped to put an end to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions of

There were no toilets, so human and rat excrement wound up in the meat, along with the rats themselves. These unsanitary details moved readers far more than the injustices inflicted on the workers. Other examples include the rechurning of rancid butter, the cutting of ice from polluted water and the doctoring of milk with formaldehyde. The average consumer was shocked to know that the “pure beef” was in fact contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Imagine

Sinclair went through a long list of jobs and the afflictions that were associated with each job and before each job he would say the phrase “There were.” Through this anaphora, Sinclair makes it seem like the jobs and afflictions never end, that there is a redundant amount of pain that these people have to go through. Sinclair makes the need for better working conditions overly apparent, and exposes the reader to the barbaric afflictions that the workers face. Sinclair proposes Socialism as the thing that will fix them. Also, to help enlighten the public of how these meat packing plants destroy the lives of the workers, Sinclair explains the hardships that the main family faced while working and living in Chicago while using anaphora to make their struggles seem like they never end. Sinclair exploits the phrase “they were” over and over again in front of these gloomy, dismal things that the family has gone through like “they were beaten; they had lost the game.” Sinclair’s syntax helps make the list of problems this family has faced seem endless and very hard. He does this to prove a point, that the treatment of this family, and every other worker in packingtown, needs to improve for these people to survive, and that socialism is the

Back in the 1900?s, the food was not the healthiest or cleanest you would see nowadays. From Upton Sinclair?s book entitled ?The Jungle? written in the 1906, had called the nation?s concentration to abuses by the meat-packing industry. Sinclair disguised himself as a worker in a Chicago meat-packing plant to observe harmful and unsanitary practices. In the factory, to kill rats, Sinclair wrote, ?the packers would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.? Hence, that would be the meat made for the public to eat. Many people did not consider that the meat industries actually did this, for example, former President Roosevelt doubted Sinclair?s viewpoints, and however, he ordered an investigation of meatpacking practices. The investigation report shocked him that he demanded more health and sanitary laws. In June 1906,

While making observations during field work, Ben and Maureen actually saw an employee take previously thrown away dog food out of a dumpster and place it in Henry’s vehicle. I knew from this incident, that Smackey Dog Foods, Inc had a major weakness in their internal controls with inventory and possibly an outright problem with theft. My team was present at the physical inventory count to help ensure the accuracy of the count and we performed various analytical procedures on the inventory such as comparing the gross margin percentage, the inventory turnover, and unit costs of inventory with those of the previous years. We also ensured that all expired/obsolete inventories was disposed of and not counted as we were aware of an issue that Smackey was having with the handling of returned inventory.

     While the works of Upton Sinclair are not widely read today because of their primacy of social change rather than aesthetic pleasure, works like The Jungle are important to understand in relation to the society that produced them.  Sinclair was considered a part of the muckraking era, an era when social critics observed all that was wrong and corrupt in business and politics and responded against it.  The Jungle was written primarily as a harsh indictment of wage slavery, but its vivid depictions of the deplorable lack of sanitation involved in the meatpacking industry in Chicago resulted in public outrage to the point where Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection

Thesis Statement: Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who wrote, “The Jungle”, which exposed the problems of the meatpacking industry.

In “A Rose for Emily”, Miss Emily Grierson lives a life of quiet turmoil. Her

The film Food Inc., like many other films of its category is not so much of an informative documentary, rather more of a slanderous exposé which blows the lid off of the food industry and its operations. To say that the film is neutral and tends towards more of an educative approach would be a misinterpretation to say the least. Throughout the entire movie it is always evident that the movie aims not solely to educate its audience about the truth of their food, but to convert the misinformed and inspire a rebellion against food industry practices. The movie does this through a tactful approach of bombarding its audience with gruesome clips, facts and testimonial story lines. The film asserts it claim through a thrilling critique of the horrific meat production process which is most prevalent in the U.S food industry and its impact on humans and the environment, while extoling alternative practices which seem to be more sustainable and humane, yet are underutilized. The film goes on to highlight the different players in the food politics arena, emphasizing the role that government agencies play. Also the film divulges the reality that is the monopolization of the food industry by big multinational corporations such as Monsanto Company, Tyson Food, Perdue Farms, Smithfield Foods, etc.