What Is The Irony In The Jungle

The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair was a very touching and motivating story. Sinclair aimed for our hearts, but instead, he hit our stomachs. The Jungle is a story of hardships and trouble, some successes and many failures as a family tries to achieve the "American Dream." In this book, "The Jurgis Ruckus' myth of failure is the other side of the Horatio Alger's myth of success." (xxvi)

Furthermore, Krakauer, in the structuring of his book, presents the reader with great amounts of irony, both dramatic and situational. Fairly early in the story, we know that Chris is dead, and Krakauer uses this to an ironical advantage. By already knowing his fate and his background, the reader is able to see the irony is Chris’ death. By dying in a bus in tandem with dying only a couple of hours from civilization, Chris was not truly in the wild. Once again, Krakauer makes the reader sympathize with Chris, for he died not able to fulfill his dream and escape from society. Like in the bus, he was trapped within society, unable to escape no matter how hard he tried. His use of periodic sentences solidifies this idea. Specifically, when Krakauer travels with Chris’ parents to the place of their son’s death.

Sometimes, your own actions can cause your own pain. One good example of this is The Jungle. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, was written in 1906 and is about an immigrant family, the most important Jurgis and Ona who come to America, hoping to find freedom, liberty, and most importantly, a job, as well as Jurgis looking to marry Ona. However, they soon find out that that they are being deceived at every turn, and their lives are worse than before. It is clear that Jurgis is one of the main protagonists, and while Jurgis and his family are exploited by the ‘bosses’, Jurgis is usually the cause of his own pain, and is his own antagonist. This is unique among books, because the author doesn’t usually want the reader to feel too much pity for the protagonist, but that is exactly what happens in The Jungle. The most significant ways this happens to Jurgis is by him not listening to other workers at Packingtown, when he attacked Ona’s boss, and when he joined the criminal world.

     Upton Sinclair had always insisted that The Jungle was misread but did he ever think it could have been miswritten? The style of writing is not effective when addressing issues in a capitalistic society but proves to be very effective when exposing the secrets of the meatpacking industry. The novel is not remembered for being a classic work in literature but rather an important book in history in that it changed the way America looked at food in the early part of the century.

What if the book, The Jungle wasn’t published and was delayed for another 0-25 years? How much would it affect our lives today? Well for starters, the results are not going to be good because the immigration's life wouldn’t have been so lenient and that could lead to the possibility of riots demanding change.The book the Jungle was one of the things that would help motivate change to the Chicago meatpacking industry and other food companies and without that, many people were potentially in danger from food poisoning or other harmful effects from unclean food produced by shady meat companies. The hard life of an immigrant trying to earn a living wouldn’t change and not as much people would be encouraged to make a change towards how

Anything in a novel can be represented as a symbol. Symbols are a representation of an item through an abstract concept. Surprisingly, a Union Stockyard could also be a symbol; the fictional Packingtown reveals several attributes about the real life Packingtown in the course of The Jungle. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, Sinclair uses Packingtown to symbolize the corrupt government, the working class, and the condition of the United States.

The Jungle tells the story of one Lithuanian family's journey to America to seek a better life. When the Rudkus family first arrive, they are naively hopeful about their prospects in America and have dreams of owning a home, marrying, and having children. Once they arrive, their dreams are not easy or even possible to achieve. Ona and the children must go to work, family members die as a result of brutal working conditions, and the family is cheated into signing a lease on a home, which they eventually lose. The optimism of the Rudkus family is contrasted with the hardships in their lives, and their dreams are replaced by a struggle for survival. Through their experience, Sinclair shows how immigrants are used as mere tools for capitalist

During the turn of the 19th century, the second industrial revolution was taking place in America, which shifted society from agricultural to industrial. Innovations and new technology were the driving vehicle for burgeoning businesses in the city. With this shift, populations swelled in large cities such as New York, Chicago, and Pittsburg by job seeking immigrants from countries including Ireland, Germany, and Lithuania who were attracted to the United States wanting to be a part of a so called “American dream” and economic opportunity. These immigrants longed for a chance to start over again and wanted nothing more than an opportunity to make a better life for themselves, and the generations

In The Jungle, Author Upton Sinclair uses Jurgis, the main character of the book, as an example of what the common working man’s life was like. Jurgis, along with all his family are Lithuanian immigrants, who just immigrated to the U.S. Not knowing the foreign culture, they were hired by a meatpacking plant. This plant, ran by corrupt politicians, applied strict rules and regulations; not reimbursing/paying their workers enough, long hours, etc. Jurgis joined a Union, after realizing he should fight for his rights as a laborer. Sinclair’s opinion about labor rights was, that the common working man should fight for, and be granted more rights to increase their chance of supporting their families.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair uncovers the horrors of working in the meatpacking district of Chicago. Sinclair acquired the inspiration to write The Jungle when he was sent into the stockyards to unveil the truth about the workingmen’s lives in Chicago. Sinclair’s story caused an uproar and led to him being labeled as a muckraker, a term that referred to journalists that documented the harsh conditions of workers during industrialization. He intended his novel to bring light to the socialist party, but instead the readers were more concerned about the diseased and mistreated meat that the were eating. Because of the upset, Sinclair’s novel led to the formation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Sinclair published five novels between 1904 and 1906, but none were as influential or as popular as The Jungle. A silent movie was made as a film adaptation of this story in 1914. I have not read any of the other novels published by Upton Sinclair.

Between 1870 and 1900 Chicago grew from a population of 299,000 to almost 1.7 million, the fastest-growing city ever at the time. This surge in population was largely attributed to immigrants coming from European countries seeking a chance for employment and new freedoms associated with moving to the United States at the time. 1905, in particular, was a historic year when a surge of over 1 million immigrants came to the city. During this time, author Upton Sinclair was working undercover, investigating working conditions in the city’s meatpacking district. Sinclair’s research was integrated into his novel The Jungle, a tragic story about a group of immigrants from Lithuania led by Jurgis, the main

Upon reading Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, it can easily be seen that there were numerous injustices occurring within the early 1900s Chicago government. He wrote the book in 1906 after spending six months gathering research on the lives of poor, low class, immigrant families. With this information, he published his first book, The Jungle, through which he displays the hardships a immigrant family faces when they move to America. He chose the meat packing industry in the city of Chicago as his backdrop for this story, and while the names of the characters are fictional, most of the story is based on his real observations. He originally wrote the book trying to “set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit,” but people took it the wrong way, and Sinclair explained this misinterpretation when he says “I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” (NCBI) By this, he means that he wanted the American people to see the plight of the immigrants but instead the general public was more upset by the unsanitary condition of the meat they were ingesting. While Sinclair may not have achieved his original goal, his book did in fact have a significant impact; an impact that still effects the American people of today. It led to the creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 which is the predecessor to the modern day FDA (Young 231) (US Food). The Jungle shows the corruption in the Chicago government through the main character Jurgis and his trial, the raping of his wife Ona, and the unsanitary conditions in the meat factories where he worked.

In 1904 Upton Sinclair went undercover in the Chicago stockyards. He immersed himself in the meatpacking culture and studied the inner workings of one of the world’s largest industries. Through about seven weeks of posing as a worker, he had gathered enough material for his greatest work and a catalyst for change in the 20th century. Sinclair compiled his experiences to create his classic novel The Jungle. The book follows a family of Lithuanian immigrants and their pursuit of the American Dream. Because this novel is a forerunner in the field of investigative journalism, the scenes and events are based off of real life observations and research. The experiences may not be exact stories from people but the circumstances were realistic. Through

The Jungle was a book written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 about the terrible conditions and manipulation immigrants faced in the United States in Chicago and other industrialized cities in the US. The novel was centered upon a Lithuanian family who heard stories of America and the better life it had to offer. Excited about all the opportunities in America, the family of 13 including Jurgis Rudkus, Ona Lukoszaite, Elzbieta Lukoszaite, Marija Berczynskas, Jonas, Antanas Rudkus, Little Antanas Rudkus, Stanislovas, Kotrina, Vilimas, Nikalojus, Juozapas, and Kristoforas, packed their bags and moved to America, the “land of opportunity.” There they found opportunities where, more often than not, they were manipulated by people. The book discusses the horrors inside the meat-packing industry that would turn some vegan and make most meat eaters cringe, but; nonetheless, keep eating. Using imagery and connotative diction to amplify the characters, plot, and theme in his novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair is able to successfully capture the reader’s emotions and reveal the unsanitary environments, unfair working conditions, and unethical business practices in America's meat-packing industries.

We live in a society where the similarities between female and males are seen at birth. It begins innocently with the toddlers; girls get pink while boys get blue. The gap between boys and girls develops with time and becomes increasingly apparent. There are still gender stereotypes today, but it is not as bad as it was in the past. Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” perfectly portrays gender stereotypes. It represents gender concepts as cultural constructs in the period it was written. These conceptions are comparable to current stereotypes about gender. The book gives us a list of commands from a mother to a daughter. Men in the society are dominant to the women, and the set of rules is a product of patriarchy whereby the mother and daughter appear as subordinates to the men in their lives. The article makes one aware of the prevailing masculine hierarchy that exists in a family, and how it creates firm gender roles for females in the society.