Socialism in The Jungle Essay

After leaving jail, Jurgis had the opportunity to become incorporated into a life of thievery, with a man he met the first time he was in jail, Jack Duane, and together the two partners robbed people of money and jewelry, and soon it bothered Jurgis not to see a man harmed after he was mugged by the pair. "A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of

One of the immigrants from Lithuania in the story, Jurgis Rudkus, is a strong unswerving (future) husband who came from a family of peasants. Like many families who moved to America, one main goal for Jurgis was to earn wealth for his family, which he soon realized was a far, far away dream. Shortly after his move with his fiancé, he’ll come to learn

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

In 1900, there were over 1.6 million people living in Chicago, the country's second largest city. Of those 1.6 million, nearly 30% were immigrants. Most immigrants came to the United States with little or no money at all, in hope of making a better life for themselves. A city like Chicago offered these people jobs that required no skill. However, the working and living conditions were hazardous and the pay was barely enough to survive on. This is the bases for Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a vivid account of life for the working class in the early 1900s. Jurgis Rudkus and his family travel to the United States in search of the American dream and an escape from the rigid social structure of Lithuania. Instead, they find a myriad of new difficulties. Sinclair attributes their problems to the downfalls of capitalism in the United States. While America’s system was idealistic for Jurgis and his family at first, the mood of the story quickly transforms to assert that capitalism is evil. This theme drives the author’s message and relay of major issues throughout the entirety of the novel. The idea of capitalism and social Darwinism is to

“Order of society”, this is in reference to how there are a few people who have monopoly over the whole city, and that the working men are just pawns in the whole charade. And the crooks are the power pieces in an elaborate game that belongs to the kings. Jurgis starts off as a pawn or a working

Written at the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle took place in an era of unprecedented advancement in civilization where the American economy had risen to become one of the wealthiest on the planet. However, Sinclair asserts that the rise of capitalist America resulted in the virulent corruption and competition that plighted society into an untamed “jungle.” Shown by the corruption of the Chicago meatpacking industry, Sinclair highlights the repulsive filth of human greed that was created as a byproduct of the economic boom. The effects of industrialism and the rise of untamed capitalism is what raped the superfluity of workers, like Jurgis Rudkus, of the opportunity to uncover prosperity in America. Not only does The Jungle capture the brutality and acceleration of corrupt capitalism and ruthless Darwinism during the Progressive Era, it also prompts resistance and displacement of the existing political system in favor of a socialist revolution. Through the novel, Sinclair demonstrates how the deterioration of the American Dream was exacerbated by the capitalist greed and corruption that eventually drove Jurgis and his family into mental degeneration and despair.

She prematurely went into labor, which kills her and their child. Devastated by what he saw, Jurgis disappears on a drinking binge. Making no money, becoming an alcoholic, and his wife’s death threw him into a downward spiral where he thought nothing could make it worse. All of his problems were driven by the poor treatment of the immigrants. Nobody cared enough to help him and employers would keep the people who would settle for less pay, no matter what problems they had.

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was published in 1906 and was an eye-opening revelation of the workingman’s experience in the Chicago stockyards. Sinclair describes the horrible work conditions the workers endured and the unsanitary ways in which the meat was made and processed. Sinclair uses an immigrant family from Lithuania to help bring attention to the hardships and unfairness that the working class had to go through.

His job entails sweeping the entrails of slaughtered cattle through trap doors. At first Jurgis enjoys his job despite the unsanitary working conditions, long hours, and intense manual labor. The family seems content at first, however the longer they are in America the more they begin to learn about the true way of survival in Packingtown. Immigrant workers come and go, if someone gets hurt or dies on the job they are immediately replaced with another immigrant. Wage laborers are cut short of pay and can do nothing about it, spoiled meat and leftovers from several slaughtered animals are canned and shipped for consumption, and moving up in the work force seems all but possible. Sinclair is trying to allow the reader to see the truth behind the supposed wonderful place of America. The cheap labor forced upon immigrants, the extremely unsanitary working conditions and food distribution and the harsh reality of social Darwinism.

While reading the The Jungle, it does not take long to determine that there were many problems in the Chicago government. During the early 1900s, the government leaders did not seem to care about the welfare of the Chicago people, and this is seen through the fact that they did not make sure the city inspectors were doing their job, and they neglected to educate the citizens on how the election process worked. The hardships of the Chicago immigrants shown in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle could have been prevented if the government leaders had cared more about the people’s health and well being.

Reading this book was like, a roller coaster ride. Similar to the characters, I experienced some highs and a lot of devastating lows. In the story The Jungle by Upton Sinclair a family from a small town in Lithuania decide to move to the United States in the hope of becoming rich. Jurgis Ruckus the husband figure or the main character of the story claims that the United States “ was a country where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain” (Sinclair 15) .

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

The novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair depicts the lives of poor immigrants in the United States during the early 1900’s. Sinclair is extremely effective in this novel at identifying and expressing the perils and social concerns of immigrants during this era. The turmoil that immigrants faced was contingent on societal values during the era. There was a Social Darwinist sentiment

The Jungle is a novel that focuses on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. The novel was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into the Chicago stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. However, the details of the story ended up launching a government investigation of the meat packing plants, and ultimately regulation of food products. It gave an informative view of what life was like in America at the time. Important topics like immigration, working conditions and sanitation issues of the time were all addressed well in the novel.