Similarities Between Fast Food Nation And The Jungle

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.”

Schlosser describes the environment of the meat packing plants serving fast food companies in a startling straightforward narrative of his visit through a meat packing plant. He describes a brutal, and sometimes unsanitary environment. The rights of animals are a very broad and complex subject, but Schlosser touches on this as he describes the slaughterhouse floor. He describes animals in various states of disembowelment. Sometimes the animals were dead or stunned; sometimes they were thrashing about wildly in the last throws of death. The slaughter room floor was described as being covered with blood and feces. Employees worked at a furious pace to meet the day's quota. What bothered me most was the fact that this meat is not only prepared for fast food companies but also contracted out to serve our children's schools.

Readers were not concerned with the treatment of workers, as portrayed by The Jungle, because they really didn't care for the working class, or more specifically, immigrants. However, readers were shocked when they discovered exactly how their meat was processed and prepared. Sinclair used just as much, if not more, gruesome detail in describing the products the American public was consuming, as he did when describing the workplace, living conditions, politics, society and Chicago's scenery. In a futile attempt to build up the readers' sympathy toward the wage-slaves, Sinclair also details the process in which foods not related to the meat-packing industry are prepared. For example, he writes, "their pale blue milk...was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde."

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).”

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,

“But the tide was turned, according to historians and Dr. Wiley himself, when the voteless, but militant club of women throughout the country who rallied to the pure food cause” Janssen, 1981, ¶ 12). Undoubtedly, these women supported Dr. Wiley because he had become a popular speaker at their supper clubs where crusading writers of national magazines also joined his campaign by publishing his findings as editorials. Ultimately, legislation closely followed the January 1906 publishing of Upton Sinclair’s best-selling novel The Jungle, which portrayed dangerous working conditions as well as the unsanitary methods of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. On June 30, 1906, The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed providing inspection of meat products and prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transport of harmful patent medicines.

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

This is seen in the meatpacking industry where the conditions were horrific. Sinclair exposes the truth of Capitalism in America as hypocritical and deceitful. Furthermore, these changes in American society influenced the work of Upton Sinclair and particularly in “The Jungle”. Sinclair examines several societal changes during the turn of the century where his literature reflects the changes of a newly emerging

With the growth of cities and factories, citizens began to see unsafe and filthy conditions that progressives tackled to change. Muckrakers, journalists who exposed both government and corporations for their corruption, caused the most waves in change regarding consumer protection. Although at times the pieces by muckrakers were exaggerated, they were able to generate public awareness on issues that would have otherwise been swept under the carpet. One of the most notable pieces was “The Jungle, “by Upton Sinclair. Although he had originally wanted to expose the harsh conditions faced by immigrants throughout industrialized parts of America, he inadvertently exposed the meat industry for their unsanitary practices. Upton Sinclair made the public very aware of what is actually in their meat.

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of mean and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go in the hoppers together.”# There was nothing the packers would not do to make a profit, if meat went bad they would pickle it or make sausage out of it, “there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.”# The Packers took no responsibilities for the sickness that these meats caused. It was not uncommon for people to die from sickness they had gotten from eating bad meat, this is also an issue in “The Jungle” when a young family member suddenly dies one morning, “it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning-which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned unfit for export.”# Disease was also a factor for the workers, as quoted from the book “Meat and Men “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world.”# It was also not uncommon for people to fall into the vats and become lard. “The public revolted at the

In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.

The metaphor of the human being as a waste product allows Sinclair to tap into the guilt feelings of his audience.  At times, the book reminds one of those late-night TV solicitations for funds for third-world children.  What is interesting is that this is not particularly a good novel to read; the writing is dogmatic and often polemical.  Rather than trying to convince with reason and subtlety, Sinclair is shoving a point of view down the throats of those watching.  Still, this brutal approach is the only way to make an impression on an audience so far removed from the reality depicted in the novel.  Such an approach draws on the Catholic/Jewish/universal guilt that is plied by Sinclair like a preacher through the meat market of industrial life.  Rudkus comes into the novel full of hope and the reader must identify with his hopes and dreams.  Yet these dreams are not exactly fodder for a successful novel, if Rudkus was to find his American Dream.  The dream he finds is as rotten as the sausage that he processes, as is the American Dream in the socialist mindset of Sinclair.

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

Fast food restaurants exude bright colors, distribute meals with toys, and create a sense of happiness, but what truly goes on behind the scenes of this magical industry? In Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the authors use similar rhetorical strategies to reveal the motives and unconventional practices of the food industry. Schlosser conveys his purpose through the utilization of pathos, ethos, anecdotes and imagery as compared to Sinclair who uses historical references and figurative language as well as imagery and pathos.

In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.