The System In John Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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).”

This hard working, yet naïve immigrant leads his family from Lithuania to the one word of English he knows, Chicago. In the beginning of the novel, Jurgis believes a good, strong work ethic is the foundation for what any person needs to be successful in America, even opposing the very idea of a union. Upton Sinclair affirms this idea by writing, “But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as this- he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn’t do it, let them go somewhere else” (Sinclair, 43). But throughout the novel, it is exposed that greedy businessmen take advantage of unskilled workers by lowering wages and extending working hours because of the abundance of immigrants willing to work for less. For example, business leaders employed women and children at a fraction of the pay rate compared to men, which promoted institutionalized poverty and highlighted the lack of government influence in this economic period. Everyone is willing to undercut each other just to survive the machinery of capitalism, as evident by the title The Jungle, a cut throat competition for survival. Just like the cattle and pigs lined up to be slaughtered in Packingtown, wave after wave of immigrants lined up to be worn down and abused by the non-stop grind of dehumanizing conditions. Sinclair shows that the painful and toxic evils of capitalism are the driving force which keeps hard working immigrants like Jurgis from leaving their socio-economic

In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Sinclair introduces several issues that were going on in the Progressive Era and after. During the Progressive Era, Sinclair wanted to improve society somehow and to open the people's eyes about what was really going on, this is called muckraking. He wrote about problems that the working society went through year round and somehow described them nastier. The main character in the book is Jurgis Rudkus and he is from the Lithuanian countryside. It first starts off with the wedding of Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, and it introduces tiny problems that the guests have with the wedding feast, especially in the meat. Furthermore, in Lithuanian weddings, the hosts would never let one

There are various examples of different political issues throughout The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. One political issue is that political officials don’t have any worries especially when it comes to maintaining a stable job while the working class people are at risk of losing their job at any moment. In the passage Sinclair writes “Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his testing.

The deeper that Jurgis and his family go into the jungle, the more it takes from them. After the death of his son and a second round of prison, Jurgis loses contact with his remaining family. Packingtown comes to be less of a struggle and more of a battle ground as Jurgis becomes involved with crime and the politics of the city. Through his prison cellmate, Jack, Jurgis slowly becomes sucked into the darkness of corruption and soaks in the wealth of being a union patsy. When he again attacks Phil Connors, he loses his set up within the

The common way books are written is that authors have an idea and then they use different elements to make the book what it is. Upton Sinclair is a world famous, award-winning author and a politician. He, like other authors used elements when he wrote his most famous book, The Jungle. The Jungle inspired change in the meat packing industry because people saw the awful condition the meat that they bought was in awful condition. The world in this time was very different form today’s age. Many labor laws have changed through the last one hundred years, and the food sanitary has also changed. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair uses the elements of historical context, biographical info, and literary elements in making the book what it is.

Since the industrial revolution, our country has made tremendous strides to ensure Equal Employment Opportunity and safe work environments. Horror stories of unfair treatment and unsafe work environments are portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. Factory working conditions are portrayed as men, women, and child work long hours in unsafe conditions with no worker rights whatsoever (Sinclair, 2011). As workers died in the factory or were injured, another warm body was placed in their position (Sinclair, 2011). Wages were almost nonexistent (Sinclair, 2011). It is because of unsafe working environments, low wages, long hours, etc. that the government decided to intervene and create various regulatory groups. As we

An author’s beliefs can often greatly influence their work and the responses to them. This is especially true with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Sinclair had prejudices that affected how The Jungle was written and how the public reacted to it. These biased opinions both added to and distracted from the purpose of the novel in many ways. The text would be much different in style and content if Upton Sinclair did not input biased opinions. Likewise, the way the public and critics reacted to The Jungle was changed dramatically by prejudices present in the novel. There are positive and negative ways Sinclair’s beliefs impacted his work as well as people’s feelings towards it.

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.

Truth be told, Sinclair demonstrates that the working environment security was greatly low and representatives were at the high danger of harm similar to the instance of Jurgis companions, relatives and Jurgis himself. In the meantime, the damage of laborers frequently implied the loss of employment that demonstrates that the mid 20th century specialists were not secured in their rights. Now, it merits specifying the way that lawful demonstrations that legitimately secured representatives, who endured wounds or had incapacities, were presented just in the late 20th century, for instance the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Consequently, the carelessness of managers and absence of worries about their representatives' wellbeing was a standard in the US in the past and this disposition has

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

In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair reveals the vicious and merciless characteristics of the system of Capitalism through Jurgis. At the beginning, he comes to America full of hopes and dreams to improve his life but then he helplessly falters because of the cruelty of Capitalism. The Jungle portrays two oppositional images of America, which is seen by newcomers like Jurgis as a free land of opportunities that would give them fortunes and make their dreams come true, but in reality is a world of slavery under Capitalism.

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.

Upton Sinclair uses many techniques to show the theme and purpose of The Jungle. The title of The Jungle itself is an overarching metaphor of the theme and purpose. It shows that The Jungle’s purpose to tell people about the lives of immigrant workers and how the workers were treated, and to support the socialists’ ideas. The Jungle's subject is shown through the title as well; in the idea that animals and people are the same to the bosses of Packingtown.The Jungle’s title is an overarching metaphor for the purpose because Sinclair wanted to show that the lives of immigrant workers were difficult, full of strife, and they were treated terribly. In a jungle, it is survival of the fittest, and each animal has to work to survive. The same goes

The Jungle is a novel that focuses on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. The novel was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into the Chicago stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. However, the details of the story ended up launching a government investigation of the meat packing plants, and ultimately regulation of food products. It gave an informative view of what life was like in America at the time. Important topics like immigration, working conditions and sanitation issues of the time were all addressed well in the novel.