The Jungle Dialectical Journal

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).”

In the book, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Doerr changes the narration of the book by interchanging the two characters’ perspectives. I think that the narration change between the two characters made the book more intriguing to read. One example of when the story was more intriguing was in chapter eight where Marie-Laure was hiding from the German soldiers who had been searching the house for a couple of days. This part was really intense because the soldiers wouldn’t leave until they walked away with what they wanted. The next section went on to tell the story about Werner and his mission in Saint-Malo. Werner’s interruption made the story more suspenseful because I had to wait a couple of chapters before finding

zany He threw a finger to the dead end of the corridor, where twenty-someting Jason Abbernathy proceeded with a smile, sliding a homburg over his gelled hair and urbanely clicked his door shut.

1. I would put myself in the place of the man on the horse he looks like he could be the leader, so the leader.

4. She went into the store and she didn’t find anything she wanted to buy.

1) “They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment” (O’Brien 20).

“They were not badly off whilst Morel was in the hospital. There were fourteen shillings a week from the pit, then shillings from the sick club, and five shillings from the Disability Fund.” (pg.87)

With my senior year just beginning I am now the head of the Zumba club, which means my partner and I are now in charge of organizing dances and instructing the class and organizing our dance for Multicultural Week. I am planning to perform in the Spirit Week Night Rally this year, with some of my closest friends. I will still be apart of the Black Student Union (BSU) production next year in the month of February. Since. I attend church on a regular bases at Bethel Missionary Bethel Church, and I am a member of both the choir and the usher broad. I sing in the choir every fourth and if there is a fifth Sunday of every month and I usher every first and third Sunday of every month. I’m still a member of YAM, which meets on every Friday, except

Chapter 4 was insightful in public opinion, because there is a lot to say about it. The political socialization unit was something we all know, but it also allows time to look into the lense of children, I looked at this more intently because I am taking a juvenile delinquency course and we read about exposure to environments as well as the family molding a child is very impactful.

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.

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.

“‘Why do you say Africa instead of just saying the country you mean?’…‘You don’t know America. You say Senegal and American people, they say, Where is that...’” (Adichie 15).

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

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

Sinclair began by informing the public on the everyday making of meat products and the inhumane ingredients that went inside it. He also stated that inspectors at factories didn’t do thorough searches, and often just talked to the workers. The text states,”If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched…”(Sinclair Document A).This quote shows that inspections were never thorough enough to bring up dilemmas in the businesses. While meat inspectors talked to workers dead hogs would be carried by them, which weren’t checked for diseases. Once uncovering this, Sinclair knew there was a needed change in the inspections.