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The Themes Of Symbolism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a novel written in the early 1900s portraying the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the united states in Chicago and other industrialized cities. The story follows Jurgis Rudkus and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who moved to the United States to work in the meatpacking plants in Chicago. Their story is full of hardships. Jurgis and his family face great difficulties: harsh and dangerous working conditions, poverty and starvation, unjust businessmen who take their money, and much more. In Sinclair's novel, a majority of working men engage in dishonest practices but do not feel any remorse for their actions. Many that were engaged in dishonest practices had done it to survive. While others had done it to get ahead in society. Jurgis in the beginning of the story was an extremely honest person, but throughout the story, he goes through many hardships that change him. Although there are many difficulties he had to lead up to him being dishonest, some of the main struggles such as losing his house, not having money, he sees his father work to death, his wife gets raped, then his wife dies giving birth to their son, the son died as well. The significance of the title is that Sinclair uses a jungle to symbolize how humans are like animals with their unrestrained longing for something, may it be money, lust, or power. It is an image of “beasts” that live in the jungle being violent and brutal. The title is not the
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