How Does Upton Sinclair Present Capitalism In The Jungle

Throughout Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, the inhumane and disgusting treatment the working men and women was shown to the eyes of the American people. Although what the book is most recognized for is creating the Pure Food and Drug Act, an act that gave consumers protection from dangerous and impure foods, the many various horrors the lower working class had to go through was something that deserved more recognition. Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, gives an insight on how it was nearly impossible for someone of lower class to work and survive in the various big cities in America.

Christopher Phelps’ Introduction states, “As a metaphor, ‘jungle’ denoted the ferocity of dog-eat-dog competition, the barbarity of exploitative work, the wilderness of urban life, the savagery of poverty, the crudity of political corruption, and the primitiveness of the doctrine of survival of the fittest, which led people to the slaughter as surely as cattle.”(1), this is the foundation to Sinclair’s arguments that capitalism promotes competition between the working-class for mere survival all the while destroying human rights

Upton SInclair’s novel, The Jungle, is a novel based on the “Gilded Age” in american history. It is the life of a working man named Jurgis Rudkus and as the story progresses, it shows the corruption and dishonesty of the people during this time period, as well as their reasoning behind their actions. Also as the novel continued, it showed the author's inspiration for the title of this novel. Throughout the book, Upton Sinclair had scattered metaphors as to why Capitalism is corrupt and why Socialism is better. With subtle hints to social classes and how Jurgis progresses through them through corruption.

The Jungle is book that takes the reader in a period in time where the “American Dream” was the only thing worth believing in the daily job struggles of immigrants in America during the early twentieth century. What is the American Dream? It is said that any man or woman willing to work hard in this country and work an honest day is capable living and could support his family and have an equal opportunity to success. Although The Jungle was taken account more on how the meat production was disgusting and unhealthy for production and consumption. However many missed the real message of this book in which Sinclair wants to engage the reader in particular scenario of the failure of capitalism. According to Sinclair, socialism is the only way out of the failure of capitalism. It is the way that all problems can be solved and works for the benefit of everyone where capitalism works against the people. The slow destruction of Jurgis’s family at the hands of a cruel and unfair economic and social system demonstrates the effect of capitalism on the working class. As the immigrants, who believe an idealistic faith in the American Dream of hard work leading to material success, are slowly used up, tortured, and destroyed.

Capitalism can become corrupt. This is exactly what Upton Sinclair is trying to argue in his novel, The Jungle. Sinclair makes a strong case for Socialism, describing why capitalism is bound to fail. Instead of having the desired effect of making the world aware of Socialism, his tactics of muckraking and yellow journalism to expose the conditions in the meatpacking facilities took the world by storm. Sinclair’s vivid depictions of life in the Chicago stockyard changed the world in 1906, but it did not bring Socialism into the public eye as he had hoped; instead, it ushered in new regulations and standards in the food industry, but those regulations still are not enough to stop the corruption of meatpacking companies.

Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, was written about the meatpacking industry of Chicago in 1906. The inside look at the processes of the factories opened the eyes of the American people and led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Throughout the novel, Sinclair brings to light the true conditions in the meatpacking factories through the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants. The atmosphere created by Sinclair in The Jungle is comparable to a literal jungle through concepts such as corporate hierarchy, Social Darwinism, and metaphorical language.

     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

Upton Sinclair was a prolific writer. Growing up he was very intelligent and began writing novels at an early age. Sinclair was influenced by social injustice and socialism, which encouraged him to publish The Jungle. The Jungle is a social criticism about a family immigrating from Lithuania to America in search for a better life. The main characters Jurgis and Ona are a couple from the rural countryside of Lithuania. They immigrated with their family to Packingtown, Chicago where the meat-packing industry is located. The family expected to immigrate to a nice wealthy city but settled in an overcrowding boardinghouse in a poor neighborhood. They experienced many obstacles and maltreatment of capitalism that damaged many aspects of the family’s life. Throughout the novel, Sinclair reveals the struggle to pursue the American Dream. Sinclair’s main point in the book was to reveal the issues of capitalism and wage slavery.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a story about a family that travels to America in hopes of living the “American dream”. Once they arrive, they soon find that dream is not so easy to obtain. Throughout the book he stresses that socialism is the answer and capitalism is evil. I enjoyed this reading because it really showed what it was really like at the time. People were dreaming of freedom and having the white picket fence house, but in reality most people were struggling to just stay alive.

Christopher Phelps, ed. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 363 pages with related documents.

America is one of the strongest countries in the world; the reason for that is because of all the rough times that it has gone through in the past. America has gone through times of bad working conditions and child labor while also going through times of poverty. Over the course of history, authors have turned to these conditions in order to create some of the most thrilling novels. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is no exception to this. The novel involves the harsh realities of child labor, terrible working conditions, and discrimination in order to provide the public with a story that brings these conditions into the limelight. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair uses his lifetime experiences, his era of injustice, and his knowledge of Socialism

Jokubas, Jurgis’ old friend from Lithuania who also immigrated to America, explained to Jurgis’ the meticulous process the pigs went through in the slaughterhouses. Every tangible part of the job had a purpose: the hooves made glue, the bristles made paintbrushes, the hide made leather products; nonetheless, the squeal could not be contained. Moreover, a squeal is not profitable, therefore the sound was not useful. In the same way, according to Sinclair, capitalism used everything about the lower class except their squeal. Sinclair depicted capitalism in the same light- the hogs were the lower class, while the butchers were the profiteers. The lower class toiled laboriously for little pay; dwelled in poor and unsanitary homes; and were swindled

The Jungle is the book that reflect the reality of the capitalism, it was written by Upton Sinclair. It basically talk about how a couple with their family is struggling with their life in Chicago because of the society; the way how it is ruining people life. Capitalism is considered as a evil because of the meat packaging factory. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite are the two main character in the story; they are immigrant that move from Lithuanian to America to have a better life, but it seems hopeless because they become victim of the Capitalism's social; it takes away a right to live of people.

Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, describes very well the problems Americans had to deal with in order to survive. This book is great because it is very hard to find any other newspaper or book on the conditions they had to go through. Many would say that this is caused from the wealthy paying people off the keep it out of the news. The Jungle is a very gross book that shows very vividly the way of life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Jurgis, an immigrant who moves to Chicago for what I assume to chase “the American dream” very quickly realizes how much authority the wealthy men and politicians have and how cruel they can be with it. The bosses know how much control they have and they abuse it. In the book it describes how if a person is a half hour late to work that they will be fired and replaced that day, also the work is very tough and actually ends up killing Jurgis’s father. This just made it harder on the family who was lucky to bring home enough money to cover rent while the wealthy are making large profits and have nobody to stop them. Upton described how nasty the meat packing facilities are in one paragraph he explained how the cattle that had been slaughtered were ones that “had been fed on ‘whiskey-malt’ the refused

The American Dream is the founding idea of the American economy, however it does not hold as much promise as it seems. The Jungle follows the Lithuanian couple, Jurgis Rudkus and his 16 year old bride, Ona Lukoszaite, as well as some of their extended family, in their immigration to and life after arriving in America. The family travels to Packingtown, Chicago, lured in by the pretense of the American Dream. Right away, they learned that the fantastic high wages were followed by high prices for everything else. Young, strong, and full of energy, Jurgis quickly finds a job, as do a few other relatives, and the family decides to buy a house. Wrongly believing that they would own it one day, they agree to a contract for a house, unaware that its high interest and hidden fees would keep it out of their reach. With the added expenses, the rest of