"The Jungle": Inspiring Change in the Workplace

In the “the Jungle” the author Upton Sinclair uses ethos,pathos and imagery to expose the meat packing industry of its disgusting ways to the public’s eye. The first pathos the rhetorical device responsible for getting people into their feeling more than in their thoughtful minds. For example Mr. Sinclair takes full advantage of this when explains the meat packing plant products are not what you think they are. In this quote “there would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.”

This novel was a big hit because of its subject. The novel was supposed to focus on the harsh conditions and overworked lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago. “However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary use in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper.” (Gilder Lehrman) This then got the people talking about the meat packing industries unhealthy work. In Sinclair’s novel he described “the disease of packinghouse workers, from severed fingers to tuberculosis and blood poisoning.”(Gilder

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 “The jungle” by Upton Sinclair, Jr. is about the harsh conditions immigrants live thou. One chapter in particular talks about food and the uncleanliness of it. The meat packing district is where meat goes to be canned or packaged. There would be meat stored in great piles in

In The Jungle by Uptown Sinclair, the immigrants were exploited to a point of slavery. They were not treated with care, and were considered a number and not a person. The company did not care whether or not how the person did their job, or how much danger the person in. As long as the job was done on time, and no money was wasted. At some points the men would not be able to work. Some men had little to no feeling in their hands due to cuts, and bruises. Uptown Sinclair showed this by saying, “The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to trace them.”-chapter 8 Sinclair. No person should have to go through all the pain and suffering these men had. It is hard for a person to make

Sinclair’s writing started to become very eminent in the early 1900’s, and by the age of 16 his book The Jungle changes the food industry forever. In 1905 Sinclair was hired to work in “Packingtown” Chicago for a meat processing company for a pay of $500 ( $13,513.51 today’s money) (Upton Sinclair Hits Readers in the Stomach). For two months Sinclair worked in the meatpacking industry, afterwards, he went into solitude for nine months to write about the details of the industry. “The meat would be shoveled into carts,

In the 20th century, factory jobs were one of the most sought after by immigrants and members of the American lower class. These jobs were often in unsafe conditions, with long working hours, and very poor paying salaries. In 1906, Upton Sinclair released a narrative entitled The Jungle, a description of immigrant working conditions in the meat packing and production industry. It was intended to reach out to the average American and inform them of the conditions in which immigrants lived and

The lack of oversight in politics allowed industries to circumvent controversy and take advantage of the american people. Furthermore businesses such as the meat industry were able to sell unhealthy meat to the people. As well the meat industry provided unsanitary and harsh working conditions in which nobody could work in. For example in “The Jungle” Sinclair describes the horrific process in the meat industry and the reality of the business. In a meat packing factory a family has to deal with the harsh working conditions: “And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them” (160 Sinclair). The meatpackers revolting and toxic hygiene practice serves as a metaphor for the exploitive labor

“The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy, which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped

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

Back in the 1900?s, the food was not the healthiest or cleanest you would see nowadays. From Upton Sinclair?s book entitled ?The Jungle? written in the 1906, had called the nation?s concentration to abuses by the meat-packing industry. Sinclair disguised himself as a worker in a Chicago meat-packing plant to observe harmful and unsanitary practices. In the factory, to kill rats, Sinclair wrote, ?the packers would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.? Hence, that would be the meat made for the public to eat. Many people did not consider that the meat industries actually did this, for example, former President Roosevelt doubted Sinclair?s viewpoints, and however, he ordered an investigation of meatpacking practices. The investigation report shocked him that he demanded more health and sanitary laws. In June 1906,

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

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.

B. Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were processed & how meat was piled on the floor before it was carried off.

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.