The Jungle Of Upton Sinclair

A muckraker is a person who exposes the truth about businesses and the government. These are known today as whistle blowers. Upton Sinclair was the King of muckraking. During the Progessive movement, the United States was going through a time of progressive meat production and packaging. Upton Sinclair wrote a novel named “The Jungle” that revealed what really happens in the meat producing industry. This was only one of one hundred pieces written by Sinclair.

In 1904 Upton Sinclair went undercover in the Chicago stockyards. He immersed himself in the meatpacking culture and studied the inner workings of one of the world’s largest industries. Through about seven weeks of posing as a worker, he had gathered enough material for his greatest work and a catalyst for change in the 20th century. Sinclair compiled his experiences to create his classic novel The Jungle. The book follows a family of Lithuanian immigrants and their pursuit of the American Dream. Because this novel is a forerunner in the field of investigative journalism, the scenes and events are based off of real life observations and research. The experiences may not be exact stories from people but the circumstances were realistic. Through

Sinclair used his biographical details to influence the book. Including his background in Socialism which can easily be seen inside of the book. He used his background on Socialism on the main character, Jurgis. Sinclair also uses world details to help the details in his story. The world in that time-period was very different to the world now-a-days. In America, there were mass immigration like the United States had never seen. Many immigrants flooded the United States. and set up communities near cities. With all this people inside urban areas, the jobs within the cities became very cheap and many immigrants would work for minimum wage and tough hours. Upton Sinclair’s novels served a major purpose in society. In specific, Sinclair’s novel The Jungle was the main example of his influence, as it led to the meat inspection act to regulate the meat packing industry. The Jungle will go down as an historic read because of the influence it had, and the elements that made it

In the Labor Union, many workers advocated for improvements of working conditions. In an excerpt by Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” describes the disgustingness of meatpacking industry and the horrendous conditions the workers had to be in. Workers had to work at least 16 hours of labor a day under dreadful working conditions, while being paid low wages. On top of that, many workers would lose limbs while working; workers would lose their lives at work. The majority of the workers would be children, due to children not asking for high wages and they are able to get into the machines to work or fix them.

Upton Sinclair was a popular and prolific American author, who wrote nearly 100 books. His work was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. He was born in Maryland on September 20, 1878, and died in New Jersey on November 25, 1968. Sinclair's parents were poor but his grandparents were wealthy. This opportunity to live in two social settings gave him insight into how both the rich and poor lived during the late 19th century. This contrast greatly influenced his writing and set the stage for his socialist beliefs. Sinclair had a passion for education, was a prolific American novelist and a champion for socialism, health, worker rights, and many other social causes, and he made an impact in politics.

The working environment in slaughterhouses and meat packing factories were atrocious. According to Sinclair in The Jungle, the workers in these factories were to pickle or smoke spoiled meat and cut off the contaminated parts. The meat that had been dropped was picked up and put back in the grinder as if nothing happened at all. If a whole ham is spoiled to the point it smelled the workers were to chop it up with other meats and pour chemicals to smother the pungent odor oozing off the meat. Rats overrun storage rooms where the meat is kept in piles under insufficient, leaky ceilings. The factories have workers mop up the brine, that is used to preserve the meat, towards a hole in the floor so it can be recycled and used again. After a few days, workers were to shovel the unused rotten scraps into the truck that hauled off the meat.

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878. Sinclair’s parents, Upton Sr. and Priscilla, were devout Episcopalians who regularly attended church with their young son. His parents deferred his formal education until he was ten years old. He then completed the work of eight grade levels in less than two years and at age thirteen passed the entrance exam to the college of the City of New York. Sinclair sold short novels to finance five years at City College and graduate studies in literature and philosophy at Columbia University. In 1900 he married Meta Fuller, and their son, David, was born 1901; the couple divorced in 1912. Sinclair married twice more. He met numerous figures who influenced his development

Sinclair went through great efforts in constructing his work, spending seven weeks surveying the streets of Chicago and even going as far as to don factory workers’ overalls and sneak into a local packing station to obtain firsthand knowledge of the wrongdoings of industrial

Upton Sinclair was a prolific writer. Growing up he was very intelligent and began writing novels at an early age. Sinclair was influenced by social injustice and socialism, which encouraged him to publish The Jungle. The Jungle is a social criticism about a family immigrating from Lithuania to America in search for a better life. The main characters Jurgis and Ona are a couple from the rural countryside of Lithuania. They immigrated with their family to Packingtown, Chicago where the meat-packing industry is located. The family expected to immigrate to a nice wealthy city but settled in an overcrowding boardinghouse in a poor neighborhood. They experienced many obstacles and maltreatment of capitalism that damaged many aspects of the family’s life. Throughout the novel, Sinclair reveals the struggle to pursue the American Dream. Sinclair’s main point in the book was to reveal the issues of capitalism and wage slavery.

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle aimed towards the goal of showing the american population how wrongly the immigrant workers were being treated in society during the early twentieth century. However the book was highly acclaimed for its detailed explanation of the meat production industry instead and also the horrible conditions the workers had to work in. This novel was enough to influence President Theodore Roosevelt to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and change the entire food production industry in the United States. Known as a highly revolutionary novel The Jungle was enough to inform the american population about what was really going on with their food and in their society at the time.

The difficulties the worker in the “Child of the Romans” goes through at his job to make ends meet is heavily related to Jurgis’s situation in “The Jungle,” as they both had a hard time trying to get by financially despite the determination they put into their work. From seeing how the worker put in a “ten hours day’s work” (Sandburg 9) but only ate a “dry bread and bologna sandwich” (Sandburg 7) and Jurgis felt like he had to be “a fertilizer man for life” (Sinclair 3) to get by financially, it is clear to see how hardships present at someone’s job may make it difficult for someone to be able to succeed in America, as people like these two laborers could be stuck in a situation in which they are daunted by their work. Hence, even through embodying hard work and determination, the American dream could still be hard for people to obtain, as some hurdles present on the path to success might make it too burdensome for some people to succeed. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman by way of the setting and symbolism present in their stories, illustrated how societal factors such as the subordination of women, have contributed to making it difficult for some people to achieve the American dream. These

Following this wedding sequence the book catches its readers up on the status of Jurgis and the rest during the six months prior. A man of strong build, it did not take long for Jurgis to find work in the Chicago stockyards sweeping cow entrails into waste chutes on the killing floors of Brown’s slaughterhouse. The mechanics of the slaughterhouse are communicated with vivid detail – so much so that it is no wonder they became the primary subject readers latched onto when the book originally released. Among the most interesting slaughterhouse descriptions which Sinclair provides is that of the concept of “speeding up”, in which workers in certain positions at the slaughterhouse are trained and paid more to work faster in order to set the pace of the slaughterhouse’s disassembly machine and achieve a higher output. This exemplifies one of Sinclair’s issues with capitalism. In a capitalist society, the poor are kept in need, which makes them exploitable. Because there were many unemployed people looking for work at the stockyards at any given time, not performing at the dangerous pace set by others often meant giving up your job to someone more capable of or willing to

The last few chapters of the novel reveal Sinclair’s political opinions. Jurgis attends a number of rallies and finds himself in the middle of the workers rights reform. He has a change of heart and we find him trying to undo some of the things he has been a part of. In the closing scene of The Jungle, Sinclair describes the hope of a bright new future that the Socialist Party will bring to the workers and the nation. Here Sinclair’s main purpose for writing the book is revealed. He does want to make an impact about the packing industry. He certainly feels strongly about how our food is being processed. But the main thing he is writing about is the right of the workers. According to Eric Schlosser at The Chicago Tribune, Sinclair believed

The corruption of the United States government was especially present within Packingtown; Packingtown was a nickname for the Union Stockyard in Chicago. Sinclair describes it as “a study in colors now, this smoke; in the sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple. All the sordid suggestions of the place were gone-in the twilight it was a vision of power. To the two who stood watching while the darkness swallowed it up”(page 29). The sky is being described as engulfing the building with an array of dark colors. Jurgis thinks the colors are great, but Sinclair is showing how dark the city is. The people believe they see the kindness, but was the government hiding an abundance of things from the public. The corrupt government is hiding their dark actions within the less darker colors. The corrupt government was also functioning within the workplace itself. Jurgis suffered as a result, including when “Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work that normally the injured man had done”(page 62). Jurgis was forced to do

All throughout the novel, Sinclair portrays social Darwinism. In other words, this would mean every man for himself or survival of the fittest within society, socially, politically and economically speaking. There is a part in the novel that displays quite the opposite of this, it is a rare moment in which a man (Jack Duane) has good intentions in such a time period. A good example of this would be found in chapter 17 Page 138-line