The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

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).”

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.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a vivid account of life for the working class in the early 1900s. Jurgis Rudkus and his family travel to the United States in search of the American dream and an escape from the rigid social structure of Lithuania. Instead, they find a myriad of new difficulties. Sinclair attributes their problems to the downfalls of capitalism in the United States. While America’s system was idealistic for Jurgis and his family at first, the mood of the story quickly transforms to assert that capitalism is evil. This theme drives the author’s message and relay of major issues throughout the entirety of the novel. The idea of capitalism and social Darwinism is to

labor in early industrial society and how the government supports for big business in American society. In history class, we have learn that the Progressive era is the first major reform movement in the twenty-century. It is a movement of the urban working class who look for the government intervention to improve the lives and working conditions, especially immigrants.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a graphic and affecting account of the meat processing and butchering production in the 1900’s. The Jungle is a knowledgable analysis on the social, political, and economic affairs of the food industry and the quickly expanding capitalist society of the 20th century. Sinclair uses a impoverished immigrant family looking for a finer life to highlight the social and economic imbalances of work in the food system caused by capitalism. Even over a century later, The Jungle stays relevant as a reminder to customers and policymakers about the complex food system and the likelihood for exploitation of animals and workers. The collection of food manufacturing formed over a century ago built the bases of the present-day

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

During the progressive era, 1900-1920, Chicago had a growing population due to the vast number of European immigrants settling there. By the 1900s, nearly 750,000 people, almost half of Chicago’s population was having to live in the central park. Trying to produce enough food to keep the city feed was grueling. It was about meeting the demand. When The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was published in 1906, which revealed the stomach turning ways of the meat packing companies, it caused the people to become enraged. In The Jungle, he uses disturbing visual imagery to describe the filthy conditions of the meat packing industry in Chicago during the progressive era, in order to get the public’s attention, henceforth gathering the public along his side to fight for better health codes.

In the novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, the butchered animals within the factory represent the miserable lives of the immigrants and poor people of Chicago. Sinclair creates this representation through paralleling the experiences of the animals and the people. Both the animals and the people are oblivious as to their ultimate fate; the animals do not know that the factory is the path to their death, and the immigrants do not know of all the calamities that will befall them in the United States. The novel creates parallelism in the treatment of the animals and the people; both the animals and the people are treated in atrocious ways. Finally, there is considerable similarity between the indignant deaths of the animals and the people. Thus, from the beginning of the animals’ lives in the factory and the immigrants’ lives in the United States to the death of both the animals and the immigrants and poor people, there is resemblance between the animals and the people.

When Upton Sinclair spoke about his book, The Jungle, he said "I aimed at the public 's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." (v). Never a truer word was spoken. The Jungle is the story of an immigrant family who arrived in Chicago looking for a better life only to suffer harsh living conditions as well as dangerous working conditions in the meat packing factory, where they were employed. The Jungle also brought attention to the unsanitary practices under which the meat was processed for human consumption. Finally, The Jungle offered socialism as the cure to the suffering of the workers who were employed in the factories. Sinclair, a socialist, credited many of the terrible conditions under which the immigrants lived and

The working conditions in the US in the 20th century were diffcult since workers had to struggle to survive on the daily bases.The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair does not only highlight the life of American workers but also uncovers the infleunce of capitalism in the US, where workers and employees were destined to fight for a living, while the upper-class reaped the benefits of national wealth.The Jungle gives many examples of the contemporary labor issues which are still a detriment to U.S. capitalist system and traditions of the labor unions. Sinclair demonstrates the gap between employers and the employees in his book .