Major Issues Sinclair Addresses In The Jungle

Most famous people inspire authors to write books written about their achievements, however Upton Sinclair Junior did it backwards. Some of his ninety novels including an autobiography, and in particular The Jungle, changed America forever by using fictitious stories to depict the present issues at that time. Upton Sinclair was an author and activist in the early to mid 1900’s who was passionate about issues involving women 's rights, working conditions, and the unemployed. He wrote over ninety books in his lifetime, as well as countless articles and other works of journalism. As Sinclair grew up, he was exposed to both a lifestyle of poverty and wealth that shaped his world as well as his political views as a socialist, or someone who advocates the vesting of the control of the means of production and distribution, of capital or land in the community as a whole. Upton Sinclair was a controversial author who took a stand in history by vastly impacting the food industry, becoming politically active, and forecasting solutions to social problems.

Written at the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle took place in an era of unprecedented advancement in civilization where the American economy had risen to become one of the wealthiest on the planet. However, Sinclair asserts that the rise of capitalist America resulted in the virulent corruption and competition that plighted society into an untamed “jungle.” Shown by the corruption of the Chicago meatpacking industry, Sinclair highlights the repulsive filth of human greed that was created as a byproduct of the economic boom. The effects of industrialism and the rise of untamed capitalism is what raped the superfluity of workers, like Jurgis Rudkus, of the opportunity to uncover prosperity in America. Not only does The Jungle capture the brutality and acceleration of corrupt capitalism and ruthless Darwinism during the Progressive Era, it also prompts resistance and displacement of the existing political system in favor of a socialist revolution. Through the novel, Sinclair demonstrates how the deterioration of the American Dream was exacerbated by the capitalist greed and corruption that eventually drove Jurgis and his family into mental degeneration and despair.

The Jungle is book that takes the reader in a period in time where the “American Dream” was the only thing worth believing in the daily job struggles of immigrants in America during the early twentieth century. What is the American Dream? It is said that any man or woman willing to work hard in this country and work an honest day is capable living and could support his family and have an equal opportunity to success. Although The Jungle was taken account more on how the meat production was disgusting and unhealthy for production and consumption. However many missed the real message of this book in which Sinclair wants to engage the reader in particular scenario of the failure of capitalism. According to Sinclair, socialism is the only way out of the failure of capitalism. It is the way that all problems can be solved and works for the benefit of everyone where capitalism works against the people. The slow destruction of Jurgis’s family at the hands of a cruel and unfair economic and social system demonstrates the effect of capitalism on the working class. As the immigrants, who believe an idealistic faith in the American Dream of hard work leading to material success, are slowly used up, tortured, and destroyed.

In the book, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair advocates for the overall elimination of oppression and exploitation of workers and immigrants and the use of socialism as a solution. The book depicts, and illustrates, the events and outcome of Jurgis and his family from Lithuania coming to the America’s in hopes of a better life, from the ideology of “The American Dream”. Jurgis believes that hard work will pay off no matter the size of the problem, however him and his family realize that the America’s posses corruption, harmful working conditions, and oppression of the worker and immigrants. Sinclair uses examples to express the hardships and cruelty that lower class workers faced to allow the reader to perceive whether or not there is a need for change in the system. Frederick Douglass uses the same form of writing to bring light to the harsh and unjust experiences he endured in order to persuade and communicate why there is a need to accomplish what he is advocating for.

They were forced to work longer without pay, work in unsanitary conditions, and more. Much later in the novel, after Jurgis has run away fromm his family, become an alcoholic, and homeless, he accidently stumbles upon a political meeting where he is first introduced to socialism. When he first gets to the meeting, he enters just to sit and rest until someone encourages him to listen to the speech. To his surprise, the speaker is pointing out the terrible conditions that workers face each day. Additionally, he talks about how capitalists grind most workers into capitulation. Jurgis has never heard anyone speak so vividly of the realities he was facing each day, causing him much joy. This was the first time a political party was in favor of the working class rather than the privileged and wealthy. Sinclair does an excellent job of developing the theme of reform from capitalism to socialism. As he speaks to Ostrinski, a Lithuanian speaking socialist, he is informed that just because America is politically free doesn’t mean there is no “wage slavery”. When Jurgis finds a new job, under a socialist boss, Sinclair makes it obvious that this is a much better political party than capitalism since Jurgis is making thirty plus dollars each month. This new wage is nothing compared to the amount he was making before. Throughout the novel capitalism is portrayed as a destructive form of government while Sinclair promotes socialism.

This book is called The Jungle. The Author or this book goes by the name of Upton Sinclair. The Jungle was published on February 26, 1906. Upton Sinclair is an American author with almost 100 books which are based on many different genres. Sinclair is a journalist, novelist, as well as a political activist. Sinclair is most famous for this book. The Jungle is a novel that is based on the disgusting conditions of the US meatpacking industry, and the hardships of the labor that immigrant men and women have to go through to scrap by with bare minimum pay from their employers.

For many who lived through it, the late 1900s, especially the 1980s, was a very tough time for Americans and immigrants alike. While America had to focus on repairing its country from the Vietnam War, a population surge, and the AIDS epidemic, immigrants were suffering from the xenophobic laws passed by American congress. The Haitian people, for instance, were running to America to get away from government tyranny and a severe economic depression, only to be turned away on a technicality. Even if they made it to America, they faced discrimination and poverty. It was a lose-lose situation for the Haitians. Upton Sinclair seemed to have a similar view of the Lithuanian immigrants of the 1800s. Upton Sinclair is the author of The Jungle, a book that follows a family of Lithuanian immigrants as they travel to and try to make their way in America. Sinclair used the book to speak out about the issues of America through the eyes of immigrants, including the economic system and the corruption within the government. The question this paper is required to answer is if Upton Sinclair adequately portrayed the immigrant experience. There are many reasons why one might say he didn’t, such as the fact that what he portrayed appears to be a worst case scenario and the fact that he, a white man, would not understand the turmoils of immigrant life. However, this paper is going to explain why others believe Upton Sinclair adequately portrayed the immigrant experience through The Jungle.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair depicts the atrocities of the unskilled labor work environment in the early 1900s. Sinclair is considered to be a muckraker for uncovering the filth and abuse associated in the meatpacking industry (Upton Sinclair Biography). A muckraker is defined as, “One who inquires into and publishes scandal and allegations of corruption among political and business leaders” (muckraker). Muckrakers sought out controversies to expose scandals that harmed the average American. Sinclair intended to expose the poor working conditions of the meat packing industry in Chicago. This inquiry was rooted in Sinclair’s Socialist views. The New World Encyclopedia describes Socialism as, “A broad array of doctrines

America is a great and beautiful country, but the path for us to get where we are today was not easy, but in fact, there lied stories with painful, tears, sadness and beating heart of every soul. We could tell this through our history classes, but to fully understand the feelings and colors of these hard periods, we must learn from the people who lived in those days. And today, we will travel back through time and meet the author of “The Jungle”, Upton Sinclair, who will help us to open our eyes how everything was chaos and improved in the Progressive Era. And in that book, we can also see many faces and colors of the social American world had back then.

Sinclair portrays his view through the factories’ conditions and how it only cared about gaining benefits regardless the workers’ health and safety, as well as the customers’. The work condition in Packing Town is filled

The book that I read for the assignment three is called The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair. The jungle is a Fiction book that is based on the meat packing industry in Chicago in early 20th century.

In an eye opening novel entitled The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the author tells a story in which exposes the gut wrenching and shocking facts of what actually goes on in these food processing and meat packing factories in an urban Chicago during the early 1900s. Sinclair does a wonderful job at exposing what actually happened behind these factory doors and informs the reader of the unsanitary process in which animals were transformed into meat products. However when reading this novel one must take into consideration that Sinclair’s main concern was not only the disgusting products produced but the employees that produced them as

Upton Sinclair, an American writer and reformer, was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of Sinclair’s parents came from prominent families, but Sinclair grew up impoverished because of an alcoholic father. Throughout his childhood, Sinclair lived in conditions that varied from slums to country homes but sometimes his father would spend all the family’s money on alcohol forcing Sinclair and his mother to live with his mother’s wealthy sister in order to survive (Wiedman, 2009). This allowed Sinclair to see how each side, well-to-do and poor, lived. While attending City College of New York, at the ripe old age of fourteen, Sinclair became a “hack” writer for popular magazines which he wrote under the pen names (Richard Wasowski, 2001) “Ensign Clark Fitch, USN and Lieutenant Fredrick Garrison, USA” (Wiedman, 2009). Sinclair would go on to have published around ninety books throughout his literary career (Richard Wasowski, 2001). Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, a 1906 novel in which he is most remembered for, sold 150,000 copies in the United States and was translated into seventeen languages (Karsner, 1968). Sinclair began his graduate program at Columbia University but in 1900, he left to write a poetic novel titled, “Springtime and Harvest”. In 1904 Fred D. Warren, editor of Appeal to Reason, a freelance, weekly socialist newspaper, hired Sinclair to write about the conditions of the Chicago stockyards (Richard Wasowski, 2001). For seven

Upton Sinclair took interest in fiction at an early age by writing fiction stories as a young boy to writing adventure stories and jokes to help support himself through college. He was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943 and focused on writing fiction stories about real world industrialist views. Upton Sinclair’s fiction “The Jungle” entwines the reality of the dangerous and legal conditions of meat industry workers and consumers in Chicago while narrating the lower-class lifestyle of an immigrant family relocating from a small town in Europe to America in search for a better living. During their hardship and unsuccessful process of finding this “better” lifestyle, the horrors and unsafe conditions of the meat packing industry are legitimately exposed. Back in that time, the occupation of factory working or the meat packing industry was popularly considered the source of family income. From young to old, these men, women, boys and girls were under paid and worked in terrible and unsafe conditions. Sinclair also focused on factors that women went through for employment. Many people felt as if Sinclair was fond of exaggeration while writing this book but the most important thing is that this book imposed change in America.

The upperclassmen don't like to pay socialists like Jurgis high wages because they wont make as much profit. Sinclair exaggerates the ideas or thoughts of socialists causing it to be Propaganda. Sinclair exaggerates the story by showing the struggle of the lower class and or socialists. Sinclair uses many events like when Stanislovas was eaten alive by rats because he fell asleep in the alley. Another example would be Jurgis’s wife