In the land of financial struggle that we live in at present, the fortunate are able to establish while underprivileged are left to survive in the dirt. It has been a continuous battle to find work and feed and support your family. Many are left to abandoned their families because they are not able support them financially. One textual example that portrays this struggle is Upton Sinclair’s novel, “The Jungle”. The Jungle provides the reader with insight of how the businesses took control of the average workers life, and the working conditions were horrible while the wages were low. The Jungle begins with a story of a group of Lithuanian immigrants who move to America leaving behind their loved ones in hopes of better life in America …show more content…
They move to America because they have heard stories of other immigrants who make prosperity, and want to do the same for their family. They move into a settlement in Chicago known as Packingtown, a ghetto full with rundown housing and polluting industrial factories where laborers risk their lives inside and work for low wages. They are unconscious of the hustle of the citizens to cheat anybody they can and are taken advantage of by a couple of them. America isn't exactly what it appears to be, yet they are determined to start their new life in American since coming to America was the fantasy of numerous workers of this period. The story opens at the veselija, or wedding gathering of Jurgis and his wife, Ona. They have recently come from Chicago and are celebrating their marriage in a bar in their neighborhood. It is a depiction of a substantial social affair of glad Lithuanian individuals getting a charge out of an uncommon wealth of sustenance, liquor, and great circumstances. There is music, moving, singing, and a large number of similar things we would expect today at a wedding party. At the point when hungry individuals stand outside the door, it is Lithuanian custom to welcome them inside for their fill of
The story starts with the traditional Lithuanian wedding celebration called veselija to bless the newlyweds, Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite. Everyone enjoys the feast including the endless food and the music. As to follow the
“The Jungle”, written by Upton Sinclair, Jr is a novel based on the hardships of immigrants in the early twentieth century. The author focuses in on a family that immigrated all the way from Lithuania to Chicago Illinois. They came to the states in hope for an abundance of opportunities, and a promising future but soon came to realize that their images of the American dream were anything but true.
Many immigrants migrate to America everyday with the hopes to achieve their American dream. For most immigrants the American dream consist of finding a country where effort and morality transcend to success. In “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, a family of hard working optimistic Lithuanians migrate to America with the belief that equality and opportunity dictates that all people should have the same opportunities open to them if they put out efforts. They arrive to the US expecting to find a land of opportunity, freedom, and equality, and acceptance. Instead they find a land where only crime, moral corruption and crookedness enables them to succeed. The hopes and dreams of these individuals are destroyed
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.
“The American Dream” is a phrase that affects the lives of many. Old or young, rich or poor, everyone has a wish that they hope to pursue. Often called the American dream, the longing for a life of happiness and success is an ideal that America is supposed to offer. In the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, immigrants travel to the United States on the desire that their American Dream can one day be fulfilled in the prospering new world. They believe anything can be better than their horrible lives in poverty stricken Europe. The novel follows the life of a man named Jurgis and his family. There dream is to just be able to have a sustainable life. Although many associate the term American Dream to immigrants it can also
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
Thesis Statement: The achievement of the American Dream, represented by social classes and opportunities available for social advancement, is unrealistic. The American Dream is propaganda for capitalism, rooted into the minds of believers that are used for labor. Capitalism’s fixed social classes leave no room for immigrants or for the hopeful to move up towards material success and wealth.
In the world of economic competition that we live in today, many thrive and many are left to dig through trash cans. It has been a constant struggle throughout the modern history of society. One widely prescribed example of this struggle is Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel, The Jungle. The Jungle takes the reader along on a journey with a group of recent Lithuanian immigrants to America. As well as a physical journey, this is a journey into a new world for them. They have come to
“In twentieth-century America the history of poverty begins with most working people living on the edge of destitution, periodically short of food, fuel, clothing, and shelter” (Poverty in 20th Century America). Poverty possesses the ability to completely degrade a person, as well as a family, but it can also make that person and family stronger. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a family of immigrants has to live in severe poverty in Packingtown, a suburb of Chicago. The poverty degrades the family numerous times, and even brings them close to death. Originally the family has each other to fall back on, but eventually members of the family must face numerous struggles on their own, including “hoboing it” and becoming a prostitute. The
The American industrial revolution is normal thought of as a time of happiness and prosper because of the constant stream of innovations and technologies. However, most of the hardships and struggles that were faced in this time we're not the American citizens, but the immigrants that came in search of jobs and a better life. Sadly, these immigrants didn't find a better life and instead worked long hours in terrible conditions with little pay. The novel, The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair focusses on the struggles and hardships of these very immigrants. Through the use of figurative language in the Novel, The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, Sinclair tries to convey his message that the immigrant workers during the industrial revolution
This hard working, yet naïve immigrant leads his family from Lithuania to the one word of English he knows, Chicago. In the beginning of the novel, Jurgis believes a good, strong work ethic is the foundation for what any person needs to be successful in America, even opposing the very idea of a union. Upton Sinclair affirms this idea by writing, “But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as this- he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn’t do it, let them go somewhere else” (Sinclair, 43). But throughout the novel, it is exposed that greedy businessmen take advantage of unskilled workers by lowering wages and extending working hours because of the abundance of immigrants willing to work for less. For example, business leaders employed women and children at a fraction of the pay rate compared to men, which promoted institutionalized poverty and highlighted the lack of government influence in this economic period. Everyone is willing to undercut each other just to survive the machinery of capitalism, as evident by the title The Jungle, a cut throat competition for survival. Just like the cattle and pigs lined up to be slaughtered in Packingtown, wave after wave of immigrants lined up to be worn down and abused by the non-stop grind of dehumanizing conditions. Sinclair shows that the painful and toxic evils of capitalism are the driving force which keeps hard working immigrants like Jurgis from leaving their socio-economic
Most citizens today work on the basis of the American Dream, their hopes replaying in their minds every day as they work to get themselves at the top of the chain in the land of opportunity. The minds of the laborers filled with hope that one day everything will be better and the fruit of their labor will soon bloom to light. But, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle paints a more grim reality of hard work and the dream that Jurgis and his family held so dear to his heart. The corruption of the American Dream conveys the delusion of a reward for the hard work and suffering of the laborers in Packingtown instead showing it as an illusion created by capitalism.
Work hard and make more money. That was the mindset for Jurgis Rudkus, a young male immigrant from Lithuania, who is a leading character in Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle. This was also the mindset for many immigrant workers coming to the United States, during a time where individuals strived for a better future. Main character Jurgis Rudkus and his family, were immigrants who moved to Chicago in hopes of a better life. Like so many other families, they came here with hopes of success and the fulfillment of a better life, which they had been sold upon. The American Dream was the idea, stated, emphasized, and protected by America’s Declaration of Independence. Immigrants believed in this idea whole-heartedly. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”, was the quote written by the nation’s Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence (US 1776). This quote provided individuals with the hope of a greater opportunity here in America, and excitement as they embarked upon their journey in pursuit of a better life. In Chicago, this dream, was not one
The title, “The Jungle” (Upton Sinclair. The Jungle. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005), when dissected after having read it, denotes Upton Sinclair’s view of the time period, where Capitalism was the corrupted script for people’s lives rather than Socialism. Throughout the course of the book Upton Sinclair explores, in depth, the evils levied upon stockyard workers, as a result of Capitalism, to include family and immigration, while narrowly serving his own agenda of pushing the concept of Socialism.
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