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Major Themes In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

Decent Essays

In Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle there are many themes that are included throughout the story. Examples of these themes are dishonesty, social classes, Jurgis’s place, and the encounters he has. Most of this novel has smart and well placed metaphors scattered throughout it. These metaphors fill the book with partial sub themes. A good example of these metaphors is the title itself, the jobs the characters work at, the weather, and one of the most important ones, the characters themselves. Dishonesty The Jungle is full of it from every main and single mention character. There are many reasons why characters are dishonest. One of the whole reason he family moves to America. Another reason is to earn money. This is evident with Jack Duane when Jurgis meets him in prison and he tells him what he does for a living. Others are dishonest so they simply don’t have to work so hard. While characters do dishonest deeds they have many different rationalizations for them. Most are deceitful so they can survive over others and to get ahead. While for Jurgis the start of his deceit is to support his family. That is another subject throughout the book Jurgis changes he starts off well then he lives through a tragedy or two and then switches to a life of crime until the end of the book where he becomes a full fledged thief. Jurgis in this case acts as a metaphor and almost everything in this novel is a metaphor. It’s only fitting that a book with a lot of metaphors has a title that is one aswell. The title The Jungle refers to a theorist by the name of Charles Darwin which boils down to the beings best adapted will survive or in other words survival of the fittest. Another metaphor used throughout the book is the meat. The meat represents America during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. During this time period America referred to it as the gilded age and the meat represented this by looking good on the outside but turning out to be terrible on the inside. The meat was just like america in this aspect because if you were too look at america in that time period it would look appealing but turn out to be horrible. Another commonly used metaphor used in the book are social classes and what they represent. The social

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