Upton Sinclairs "The Jungle" Essay

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.

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

The lack of oversight in politics allowed industries to circumvent controversy and take advantage of the american people. Furthermore businesses such as the meat industry were able to sell unhealthy meat to the people. As well the meat industry provided unsanitary and harsh working conditions in which nobody could work in. For example in “The Jungle” Sinclair describes the horrific process in the meat industry and the reality of the business. In a meat packing factory a family has to deal with the harsh working conditions: “And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them” (160 Sinclair). The meatpackers revolting and toxic hygiene practice serves as a metaphor for the exploitive labor

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

“There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it” (Sinclair

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.

Thesis Statement: Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who wrote, “The Jungle”, which exposed the problems 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.

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

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.

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.

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of mean and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go in the hoppers together.”# There was nothing the packers would not do to make a profit, if meat went bad they would pickle it or make sausage out of it, “there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.”# The Packers took no responsibilities for the sickness that these meats caused. It was not uncommon for people to die from sickness they had gotten from eating bad meat, this is also an issue in “The Jungle” when a young family member suddenly dies one morning, “it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning-which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned unfit for export.”# Disease was also a factor for the workers, as quoted from the book “Meat and Men “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world.”# It was also not uncommon for people to fall into the vats and become lard. “The public revolted at the

“The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy, which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped

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.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, became an instant classic in 1906, and has become possibly one of the most referenced books in history and political science classrooms all over the United States, according to Dustin LaBarge (LaBarge para.1). Sinclair’s novel has generated worldwide awareness of the repulsive meat-packing industry. I found the book intriguing, because of the detail that was added in to make sure nothing was left out. There were moments of the story that were too detailed in my opinion causing me to lose interest, but overall I found to have learned something I would probably have not known about.