The Jungle Chapter Summary

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

Upton SInclair’s novel, The Jungle, is a novel based on the “Gilded Age” in american history. It is the life of a working man named Jurgis Rudkus and as the story progresses, it shows the corruption and dishonesty of the people during this time period, as well as their reasoning behind their actions. Also as the novel continued, it showed the author's inspiration for the title of this novel. Throughout the book, Upton Sinclair had scattered metaphors as to why Capitalism is corrupt and why Socialism is better. With subtle hints to social classes and how Jurgis progresses through them through corruption.

Jurgis always struggled with money even when Ona was on the verge of dying. Jurgis finally convinced the women but Ona didn’t make it on time because it was too late already. Upton Sinclair shows you the struggle Jurgis went through with money and it wasn’t a fair life for him. When Jurgis lost both Ona and his son Antanas he was begging and a drunk man gave him a 100 dollar bill, that next day he enters a bar to receive change but the bartender tells him he has to buy a drink first, once he does the bartender only gives him 97 cents and refuses to give him his change. Jurgis then gets in a fist fight with him but then is sent to Jail. Once he was a prison he realized the life of crime was the best way to survive as an immigrant, then Jurgis finally loses his hope of getting that American dream he always wanted. Jurgis had a good reason to feel like this because he kept getting turned down by jobs and had nowhere to stay, he was homeless.

The Rudkus family arrived from Lithuania to find Chicago as "a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in the pit, in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption." (Pg.165) The city, during the time span of the novel, was truly a jungle-like society in which Upton Sinclair found much fault and great room for improvement. Sinclair perceived the problem in American society to be the reign of capitalism. In The Jungle, he presented the reader with the Rudkus family; who encountered a great deal of

Throughout The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, he portrays that capitalism is the cause of all evils in society. No matter how hard Jurgis and his family worked and tried, they were still stuck in the same squalor. Sinclair uses the life of Jurgis’s family, an immigrant family, to indicates that capitalism is bad, unfair, deceitful, untrust, inhuman, and violent. In Sinclair’s point of view, socialism is as remedy for the evils of capitalism. Jurgis’s family would have fared better under socialism than under capitalism.

Battles over power are constantly fought in societies. Inevitably, one group will find a way to rise up and assume authority over the others. As exemplified by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle, economy in twentieth century America is determined by power struggles between the wealthy capitalists and the impoverished proletariat. On a more individual level, the character of Jurgis is portrayed with the unceasing desire to free himself from the power of others and in turn gain power for himself.

This quote from the book is describing how even though working at the plant was horrible and made him sick, he still put his own values behind the values of keeping his family safe. By the end of the book, his values change drastically. Sinclair states that… “These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief.” (Sinclair) This is mostly explaining how he is getting desperate for money and food that his morals, being washed away by the sins of stealing and being a crook to survive the tough life of a gypsy.

Throughout the novel numerous acts of dishonesty were displayed. At the beginning Jurgis was a strong and determined man, as the years past he became skinnier and went down the

People warn jurgis of the troubles he may face and the perils of working in the beef industry. He thinks if he just works hard hell make enough money and be successful. Life for jurgis quickly goes into a downward spiral as his family members such as Ona his beloved wife and their son Antanas die. Jurgis goes into a drunken fury he leaves the family, hops on a train and heads to the countryside. While in the countryside he becomes healthy again and as strong as he was when he had first arrived in packing town.

Jurgis realizes that once he crossed the borders nothing changed. Through a series of unfortunate events, Jurgis gets jailed. This led Jurgis to write a novel blasting the harsh work spaces of meat packaging factories. Jurgis was an immigrant from Lithuania that got tired of the hierarchal system of government in his country. In effort to escape this strong arm style government, Jurgis and his family decided to move to Chicago, Illinois.

Sinclair was exposed to poverty at a young age, but experienced the wealthy lifestyle when visiting his mother’s immediate family. At the age of ten, Sinclair’s father moved the family to New York City. Already in the prime of his developmental years, and an avid reader, Sinclair excelled as a student and, at the young age of fourteen, “started selling children’s stories and humor pieces to magazines” (Biography.com). After graduating from high school in 1897, Sinclair attended Columbia University where “using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself” (Biography.com). After completing his studies at the age of twenty, Sinclair began actively pursuing a career as a novelist while working as a freelance journalist.

Jim explains the police brutality and unfairness of things going on in America. This is exactly what Jurgis and his family went through. Jurgis was arrested more than one time throughout the book. unjustified of course. He was once arrested for beating his wife's boss for forcing her to have sex with him and also for beating a bartender for scamming him out of change.

When Jurgis and his family came to America, they had to do everything differently than the way they were used to. They had to learn a new language and work with the people who they don’t understand. Their bosses were mean, they didn’t get payed nearly as much as they should have been, and their family could not live that way. If I were Jurgis or any of his family members, I would have done pretty much everything the same because they have to work in order to support their family, and obey the authorities over them, and defend each other.

Jurgis Rudkus, a burly young man from Lithuania, immigrants to America with his wife and extended family in hopes of a better future. Jurgis, hard-working and optimistic, quickly secures a job as a factory hand in the meatpacking district of Chicago, known as Packingtown. Initially, Jurgis knows little of the corruption and oppression which exist within Packingtown but soon experiences it first hand as poverty, hunger and loss weigh heavily on his family. Following the death of his wife and son, Jurgis leaves his remaining family and becomes involved in crime and political scandal. Eventually, Jurgis reconnects with his family and discovers socialism, a political ideology which rekindles his hopes for a future of equality and opportunity

Ironically, Jurgis thought that jail is more favorable to its prisoners rather than those who are not detained. To an average, financially comfortable, citizen, jail is not a prime destination. Yet, in prison, the prisoner is granted a permanent shelter, a source of food, and a cot that works quite adequately as a bed. The prisoner is given these “benefits” without exchange of work, valuables, or most importantly, money. Throughout his detention, Jurgis is deeply pained and angry with himself because he strongly believed that his family members are the real prisoners. Here they are in destitution, struggling to survive, and yet Jurgis is jailed, receiving luxuries his family will never see. Without his financial contribution, his family is