The Food and Drug Adminstration from Upton Sinclair´s The Jungle

As the story goes on Ona and her baby Antanas both die. Ona during child birth and Antanas will drowned in front of the house. Jurgis will then move out of the city to the suburbs leave all of his family behind. Later returning to Chicago and getting himself into a lot of trouble with the law. After some time of being in and out of jail Jurgis finally gets a job working at a hotel. He will become back in touch with his family that he left and begin to support them on what he makes by working at the hotel.

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).”

Several years before and after the turn the turn of the twentieth century, America experienced a large influx of European immigration. These new citizens had come in search of the American dream of success, bolstered by promise of good fortune. Instead they found themselves beaten into failure by American industry. Upton Sinclair wanted to expose the cruelty and heartlessness endured by these ordinary workers. He chose to represent the industrial world through the meatpacking industry, where the rewards of progress were enjoyed only by the privileged, who exploited the powerless masses of workers. The Jungle is a novel and a work of investigative journalism; its primary purpose was to inform the general public about the dehumanization

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in hopes of empathizing with the American public on behalf of countless immigrants working in slums and corrupt industries during the

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible

The novel follows Jurgis's Lithuanian immigrant family into the disgusting tenements and meat packing factories of Chicago. There, they suffer the loss of all their dreams of success and freedom in America. They find themselves leashed to the grinding poverty and misery of the city slums despite all their best efforts. Sinclair's purpose is to display the evils of capitalism as an economic system. "…had given to the thought to a struggle by the America's working class to free themselves from their enslavement under capitalism, and to the creating of a new and classless society controlled collectively by all the people in their self interest" (Harris 57). Sinclair was bemused by the public reaction to his phenomenally successful novel. "He said that he had aimed for America's heart, but had ended by hitting it in the stomach" (Harris 82).

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 portrayed the harsh realities endured by millions of immigrants and working-class people during the Gilded Age. The book is centered around a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis and his wife Ona and their family. In the beginning, Jurgis and Ona have just moved to Chicago and neither speak English; yet, they have a sense of optimism about what their life in America will look like. In fact, when Ona tells Jurgis about her concerns that their wedding costs more than they can afford, Jurgis simply shrugs her off and states “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money-I will work harder” [1]. This optimism found in the beginning; however, does not remain relevant throughout the rest of the novel. Numerous tragedies strike Jurgis and Ona’s family and soon, the happy couple loses their sense of optimism they struggle to even survive. Although, The Jungle is a fictional novel; the situations encountered by Jurgis and Ona is likely similar to what many immigrants faced during this time period. Sinclair uses his novel to make the argument for socialism and blames American capitalism for most of Jurgis and Ona’s

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is mainly about a Lithuanian man named Jurgis and his family who come to the United States for a better life only to be troubled by hardship and despair. Jurgis discovers Ona was forced

The Jungle’s purpose is to illustrate just what happens when the American Dream does not come true. It is not for a lack of determination that its protagonist does not succeed with abundance -- nor ethic or spirit; he merely falls victim to a system in which those at the top succeed with abundance at the severe expense of those left with nothing at the bottom. The book’s author, Upton Sinclair, sought to show America the cost of its capitalist system. Born into a poor family with wealthy relatives, Sinclair was aware of social and economic disparity in America from a young age (The Jungle v). The Jungle is the result of Upton Sinclair working undercover for seven weeks in Chicago’s meatpacking industry in 1904, as well as the socialist

Because Jurgis and his family suffered financially, people seemed to use this to their advantage.

Upton Sinclair the author of The Jungle a self proclaimed socialist. Wanted to show what the meatpacking industry was like from an outside perspective. Novelist have free rein when writing a novel but in this case Sinclair did not have the proper evidence to back up his version of the meat packing industry. The version that Sinclair portrayed in The Jungle was of appalling working conditions. The way he described it was diseased and rotten. The community of these workers were as misrepresented as packers and packinghouse products. He portrays Jurgis as a helpless animal that is wounded, the target for unseen enemies.

Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle made it clear that the family consisting of Jurgis, Ona, Teta Elzbieta, Marija, and others, were chasing after an almost nonexistent “American dream” in hope for happiness and money in their lives. Instead of a land of acceptance and opportunity, they find a place of prejudice and exploitation; instead of a country where hard work and morality lead to success, they find a place where only moral corruption, crime, and graft enable one to succeed materially (The Jungle: Themes, Motifs & Symbols). The hypocrisy of the American dream hit the family will full force and drove them into the ground.

The Jungle is the story of a man named Jurgis Rudkus and his family, who is forced to face hardship and hardship working in meatpacking plants as they limp towards the “American dream”; a dream that was quickly crushed after their immigration from Lithuania to Chicago. An author who knows hardship all too well wrote the book: Upton Beall Sinclair. Sinclair was born in 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland into an extremely impoverished family who struggled with the impact of the civil war. Sinclair’s family was moved to New York when he was ten years old. His alcoholic father, whom ironically happened to be a liquor salesman, made the decision. One very good thing came out of Sinclair’s troubling childhood: his intelligence and passion. He began writing

In the book, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, we read about a family that comes to America Hoping to have their wishes become a their reality. Sadly to no avail their new american life is nothing like what they wished and hoped it would be like. The family went through way too pain, disaster , loss , and hardship. It was a rude awakening all over america to the hardship and adversity that the lower class had to endure. It depicts corruption and crime in large food companies and on the streets. The book is mainly about a man named Jurgis Rudkis as he and his wife, Ona and their family travel to America with hope and determination during the time period referred to as “The Gilded Age.” Upton Sinclair Wrote this book to bring forth attention, to push socialism, but instead enlightened readers to what was really going on behind the scenes in the places that consumers get their well payed for food from.

Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, portrays the plight of immigrants in the meatpacking district of Chicago. The idealistic American Dream seems to be that of a fiction novel as Jurgis Rudkas loses his way in the corrupt streets of Chicago. Although, Upton Sinclair reveals that it is not the fault in America, but the faults of capitalism that is the source of pain for immigrants. The Jungle, in nature depicts the harsh realities of immigrant life, however it is fictional in that Upton Sinclair shapes the outcome of the novel and where the blame should be placed for the horrific events of Jurgis Rudkas new life. Consistently Upton Sinclair uses socialism as the quintessential answer to the survival of the fittest economy of the United States.