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).”

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.

For centuries immigrants have left their homes and have journeyed to the United States in pursuit to live out the “American Dream”, an idea that the U.S. will provide people with a better life. However, this “better life” was not just given upon arrival, immigrants were not told the horrid experiences, and backbreaking hour, they would face in search for a better life. There is no better representation of this than Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, this book is a very accurate representation of the life of the vast majority of people within the United States. During the time when this book was written there were few jobs, and the jobs that were obtainable were mostly factory jobs with horrible conditions that entailed excruciating hours. Aside from the dangerous conditions, the pay was next to nothing making it near impossible to afford food and shelter, let alone providing for a family. Immigrants quickly found out that the “American Dream” was not the glorified vision that they thought, rather more like the song “Welcome to the Jungle” by “Guns N Roses”. After examining the lyrics, you can tell the similarities Axl Rose and the rest of Guns N Roses were facing as they tried to make it in the music industry. “In the jungle, welcome to jungle, watch it bring you to your knees, I wanna watch you bleed,” once you get to the U.S. you’ll get ripped down to almost nothing and suffer from the horrible conditions that you are faced with. The Jungle takes all of the issues immigrants

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

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.

A wealthy nation is not a prosperous nation, as a nation can be prosperous without being wealthy. Wealth can be defined as capital or vice versa as having properties or resources and turning it into money. A country that is wealthy can have both rich and poor people living in it. There is an upper class, middle class and lower class, which individuals are associated to. We all know that individuals in the upper class have more resources, materials, properties and more money than the middle and lower class. The position that Upton Sinclair takes is that a wealthy nation isn’t a prosperous nation as many immigrants worked in horrible conditions and lived in miserable areas in her book “The Jungle”. I claim that a wealthy nation isn’t a prosperous nation because people have to look at the quality of human life and factors such as education, health care, inequality, basic needs, social goods and literacy are key aspects in determining if a wealthy nation is a prosperous nation. The first body paragraph of my essay will be focusing on Gross Domestic Product and how it is not the best way to determine if a country is wealthy or not. Also it will be addressing the issues of Qatar which is the richest nation and has the highest per capita. The second body paragraph will illustrate the drive for capital by Heilbroner and how it can produce wealth or misery. Upton Sinclair book “The Jungle” is a good example as it shows how Jurgis left Lithuania to go to America to become a wealthy

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

This book starts out with a traditional Lithuanian wedding. Jurgis is getting married to a woman named Ona, who is portrayed throughout the whole book as being a big push-over, and the type of woman that is very easy to take advantage of. Even though Jurgis and his wife Ona are on a low budget pay, they had a great financed wedding to say the least. Jurgis promises to pay everything back over the

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 Rudkus family arrived from Lithuania to find Chicago as "a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in the pit, in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption." (Pg.165) The city, during the time span of the novel, was truly a jungle-like society in which Upton Sinclair found much fault and great room for improvement. Sinclair perceived the problem in American society to be the reign of capitalism. In The Jungle, he presented the reader with the Rudkus family; who encountered a great deal of

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.

Living in the bottom of the class system, capitalism takes a toll on Jurgis and his family. His

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, was a novel written to expose the harsh conditions of the meatpacking industry. The novel also describes the struggles of a family living in America.The novel changed the way many looked at society. Fortunately, that was Sinclair’s purpose of the novel. In other words, Sinclair included many themes for the novel like “The American Dream”, capitalism versus socialism, and even the horrors of the meatpacking industry.

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.

The Jungle” is a book by Upton Sinclair. The book mainly focuses on how life was back in the early 1900’s. It really nags at how Social Darwinism works. It does this by telling a fictional story about an immigrant named Jurgis Rudkus and his family, and their experiences in america. Even though Sinclair’s intent of the book was to spread the idea of socialism, when the book came out in 1906 readers were mainly focused at the beginning of the book. How it describes the conditions of the meat packing plant, of how awful it is is. He described it in his book as: unsanitary and they do little effort to clean up the meat. So they made laws and created the FDA to clean things up. Sinclair mostly described in his book how Social Darwinism is bad. He did this by having the main characters either die off or experience a great deal of agony, because of Social Darwinism. Upton Sinclair still did some good for the future generations of America.