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…
to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposé on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declared“ I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To get a direct…
Written by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle explores the sheer, harsh conditions of the living and working environment in the Chicago stockyards. The title is significant because it represents the realities of the labor force and depicts a wild, brutal environment that benefited the wealthy, while leaving the inferior working class fighting to survive. In Particular, the The Jungle denotes the life of Jurgis and his family in Packingtown and their hardships they face in the Chicago stockyards. Upton Sinclair’s…
The Jungle is Upton Sinclair’s novel that narrates the tragedy of Jurgis Rudkus and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who travel to America to work in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. It is a grim story of suffering and hardship. This family undergoes considerable difficulties that vary from the appalling and unsafe working conditions, to poverty and starvation, in addition to merciless businessmen who extort their money as well as dishonest politicians who generate laws that permit the existence of…
(dictionary.com). Upton Sinclair gained fame in the early 1900’s from his muckraking novel, The Jungle, describing the life of a young Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis, living in Chicago in pursuit of the American dream. Jurgis found out that America isn’t as good as it appeared; with higher wages came more expensive goods, and with cheaper houses came higher interest rates. The Jungle, a fictional novel, tells of the real horrors of working in a Chicago meat packing factory. Sinclair had gone undercover…
Inevitably, Sinclair wrote his novel as an appeal to Socialism, because democracy failed to neither protect families and community values nor prevent the exploitation of wage labor from the hands of industry. The novel follows Jurgis's Lithuanian immigrant family into the disgusting tenements and meat packing factories of Chicago. There, they suffer the loss of all their dreams of success and freedom in America. They find themselves leashed to the grinding poverty and misery of the city slums…
(Mookerjee 79). “The strange, fetid odor, of all the dead things of the universe” was rampant in the stockyards (Mookerjee 79). Sinclair then goes on to explain that it isn’t just the conditions of the stockyards and the atmosphere of where the workers live and conduct business he describes what ghastly objects went into the meat that serve the American public. Sinclair effectively displays the grotesqueness and barbaric sanitation conditions by commencing the novel by explaining about the “rotten…
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was about Jurgis Rudkus who was an immigrarnt from Lithuania that came to the United States to discover his dreams, hopes, and desires. He took his family to Chicago to begin a new life. He worked in meatpacking industries that were unsanitary and brutal amount of hours that resulted into starvation. He was mistreated and realized the American dream wasn't as easy as it seemed. The book deals with disease, hunger, corruption, crime, poverty and death. “Leave it to me;…
around this time that she began to read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Sinclair was a socialist whom Day most likely would have strongly related to. Day was a part of the Christian Socialist Movement and sympathized with a lot of Sinclair's ideals. At the time she was introduced to The Jungle, Dorothy Day lived in Chicago with her family. Coindentally, The Jungle was set in Chicago, and so Day could further relate to the realities depicted in the novel. The Jungle dealt with the cruel and shocking truths…
(Jurgis looking for a job) "He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and companions at work, and feeling like and outcast. Then he went out and took his place with the mob of the unemployed But there was no work for him He wandered all day through the buildings; in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into every room to which he has access, and learned that there was not a job anywhere there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd in the…
a job, and when Jurgis asks him whether or not he can have the job in the winter, the farmer tells him no. upset, Jurgis leaves. He finds it surprising and upsetting that he can only find a seasonal job in the middle of nowhere. In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis learns that…
not to be as convincing as what was hoped, the style of writing proves to be successful in exposing the truth of the meatpacking industry. A combination of the reporter-style third person narrative and the abundance of factual information dug up by Sinclair gives the book the shocking reputation that it has earned. “To this part of the yard [the fertilizer room] came all the ‘tankage’ and the waste products of all sorts; her they dried out the bones,--and in suffocating cellars where the daylight never…
With respect to those inspectors, Sinclair is at times blatant in his disapproval, but is other tomes subtle as he shows life through the still-rose-colored glasses of Jurgis, "If you were a social person, [the inspector] was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaine's which are in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you, you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing by untouched (41)…
On the other hand, America, still under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, was inhabited by working men and women, who were more concerned about business and finances than neighborly affections. As a result, Jurgis and his family became, in the eye of society, yet another immigrant family struggling to make a modest living. America has been labeled by outsiders as “The Land of Milk and Honey” for many years. In a cynical twist of irony, Jurgis and his family became indulged in an American…
and is reunited with a member of is family. The book ends with Jurgis having lost almost all of his family and life to the terrible conditions of life in Chicago, but gains new beliefs in socialism. This is just a very shortened up summery of “The Jungle.” In many parts of the book it describes the rotten and diseased meat. “The cans have shiny, attractive surfaces but contain’s a mass of putrid meat unfit for Human consumption.”(Sparknotes, Quotations) In one part of the book it talks about a man…
However, this message does not come across effectively because the average reader is more concerned with the contamination surrounding Jurgis in the meatpacking plant: There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men. . . There were those who made the tins for the canned meat, and their hands too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a change for blood poisoning. . . as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in…
In addition, Sinclair went to great lengths to ensure that his immigrant family was not foreign to the American mind. Sinclair emphasized that their values of hard work, family togetherness, honesty, and carefulness are the same as those of the reading public. People could see their own families as the one in The Jungle. They could not withstand the effects of greed and competition any more than individuals could. The Jungle impressed readers throughout the world and Sinclair became famous almost…
While not all of these examples have a direct monetary impact, each of the dealings associated with them does which in turn motivates the parties involved to make decisions and perform actions outside the normal scope for their character. The third challenge faced by new immigrants was acquiring and then keeping steady work. Although the Packingtown in Chicago was in a constant state of activity, the sheer number of available workers and the rule of supply and demand made it difficult for some…
While not all of these examples have a direct monetary impact, each of the dealings associated with them does which in turn motivates the parties involved to make decisions and perform actions outside the normal scope for their character. The third challenge faced by new immigrants was acquiring and then keeping steady work. Although the Packingtown in Chicago was in a constant state of activity, the sheer number of available workers and the rule of supply and demand made it difficult for some…
with another immigrant. Wage laborers are cut short of pay and can do nothing about it, spoiled meat and leftovers from several slaughtered animals are canned and shipped for consumption, and moving up in the work force seems all but possible. Sinclair is trying to allow the reader to see the truth behind the supposed wonderful place of America. The cheap labor forced upon immigrants, the extremely unsanitary working conditions and food distribution and the harsh reality of social Darwinism.…
the slaughtering of an animal to processing the meat for sales ("BRIA 24 1 B Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry"). The scraps of an animal ended up in lard, soap, and fertilizer. Unskilled immigrants executed all the hazardous work, in dark and extremely hot rooms. Workers stood on floors covered with blood, meat scraps, and foul water ("BRIA 24 1 B Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry"). Women and children over 14 were given…
remains today. In the beginning I read Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle in order to gain entrance into the Advanced Placement English class. The things I learned about Socialism, the meat-packing industry and Sinclair’s own views lead me to discover a new era of writers I didn’t know existed. These writers brought to the attention of the nation problems that were carefully shielded from the public’s eyes. Many of these authors such as Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Ida Tarbell and many others took…
a writer and his life he began moving quickly. In 1900 Sinclair married Miss Meta H. Fuller. Sinclair had a child named David with her. The marriage was extremely tough though because both had very little money to work with and with the addition of his son it didn’t help the financial situation in the family. The marriage eventually failed though, Sinclair and Miss Meta H. Fuller divorced in 1911 as two very unhappy people. This gave Sinclair inspiration though to write a tale. The tale which was…
At the beginning, only Jurgis worked, he would not have Ona working. It was not long until it was realized that she would have to work, along with the children and the old and the sick. Everyone would have to work in order to keep alive, in order to feed each other and keep warm in the winter. The difficulty of finding a job in Packingtown was hard enough. The characters also had to walk to work everyday, often in below zero temperatures. The book also describes the process of “speeding up”…
racial unrest in present in the country. People do not like immigrants, because they take the jobs and they drink too much. Sinclair addresses both of these gripes in his book. The 'speeding-up' is the reason that the jobs go to immigrants, who are willing to work for anything. The living conditions are the reason for the excessive drinking, according to Sinclair. Jurgis most stay out of the cold of winter…
almost a poetic approach in his use of imagery throughout the novel. The words flow together very nicely and almost lyrically. Steinbeck sets up each image in a way that allows the readers to associate and relate with the story or characters. Just as Sinclair does, Steinbeck gives readers a firsthand look at the trials and tribulations experienced during the era of the Great Depression. Readers can step into the story or the world of the characters so to speak. Symbolism is also quite prevalent throughout…
The metaphor of the human being as a waste product allows Sinclair to tap into the guilt feelings of his audience. At times, the book reminds one of those late-night TV solicitations for funds for third-world children. What is interesting is that this is not particularly a good novel to read; the writing is dogmatic and often polemical. Rather than trying to convince with reason and subtlety, Sinclair is shoving a point of view down the throats of those watching. Still, this brutal approach is…
environment. The meat packing industry may have been the worst. It had high productivity, but its condition declined to the point of being hazardous to both the workers and consumers. Upton Sinclair vividly depicts the harsh and hazardous conditions of the meat packing factories in his novel, The Jungle: “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…
Jurgis’ father, Antanas is also betrayed by the American dream, and is only able to find a job if he provides a kick-back of 33% of his wages to the man who found it for him. These types of issues relating to characters finding “honest work” are a continuing central theme throughout the novel. These hardships only seem to intensify as winter brings illness to the family. Jurgis is becoming increasingly aware of the corruption of the management of Packingtown and finally joins a union after a long…
Republicans, "and the one got the office which bought the most votes." Readers were not concerned with the treatment of workers, as portrayed by The Jungle, because they really didn't care for the working class, or more specifically, immigrants. However, readers were shocked when they discovered exactly how their meat was processed and prepared. Sinclair used just as much, if not more, gruesome detail in describing the products the American public was consuming, as he did when describing the workplace…
As they set out on the voyage to America, they were tricked by an officer into taking his passport, and another officer arresting him and charging him for it. They were also cheated out of their savings when they arrived in New York when an agent forced them to stay in his lodge that was much too expensive for them to afford (18). But when they reached the town, a stockyard called Packingtown where Meat Packing Plants were, it shows just how much advantage was taken of all these immigrants. Real…
labor. His son drowns, many family members have died and the remainder are scattered with no semblance of the family they once were. Jurgis takes to the country to become a tramp, but as winter approaches he knows he must return to the city - to "the jungle" - once again. Jurgis becomes a beggar and a vagrant. After receiving $100 dollars from Freddie Jones, the son of rich Old Man Jones, he goes into a bar to get change and gets into another altercation, this time with the bartender, and is again arrested…
Jurgis was grateful to have a job and that’s all he knew at the time “to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain” (Sinclair 43). Is not until later on when he starts to understand more and more about the bitterness he sees in his co-workers. Another form of exploitation that doesn’t allow Jurgis and his family to achieve their American dream is the long hours of labor they must work in…
follow him to the island and they hibernate there for the rest of their days. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’ This story is about a mongoose that is raised by a small family of three. The family thought that they were relatively safe. The family lived in a jungle in a little hut. Many different types of animals lived in the garden. The family did not know, however, that one of these groups of animals consisted of two Cobras. These Cobras were thinking of killing the family. They thought that if they killed…
his beloved bride, Jurgis saw America as the prime location to make a decent living. But the life that they endured was far from decent; it was one of constant worry, fear, and hunger. One of the main aspects of life that’s was described in The Jungle was the industrial work and the many horrors that encompassed. In Chicago during this time was the massive stockyards in which livestock were slaughtered and processed into goods for the masses. The men employed needed no skills; they were assign…
The packers and criminals have control of nearly everything in Packingtown including politics. As Jurgis eventually realizes, “... the packers had been equivalent to fate. ... They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people” (311). Mike Scully, a corrupt political boss, decides who will win local elections and the majority of the time the votes are supplied through one form of bribery or another and…
different people live with different cultures. But, what makes so many differences in our world? According to the story of In the Jungle and my personal experiences, our lives are affected by living condition, natural resources and social environment around us. In the story of In the Jungle, Author Annie Dillard goes to the Napo River, which is the heart of the Ecuadorian Jungle and it is also the most unspoiled place. She describes the natural living style of the people who live there. As she tells us…
Some believe that Capitalism is the cause for much of the poverty in the nation today, but any hardcore capitalist will tell you that capitalism inherited poverty, and far from being a cause of poverty, it is the only solution. However, believers in socialism would completely disagree with this ideal. Socialism is the economic system in which the workers, instead of a rich minority of entrepreneurs, own all industry. Workers receive the full fruits of their labors instead of being given…
Father Wolf says "killing man means sooner or later there will be the arrival of white men on elephants with guns and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets then, everybody in the jungle suffers". When Shere Khan first attacks the woodcutter's camp he is shown as incompetent. He burns his paw in the human's fire and he is heard to be "mumbling and muttering savagely as he tumbled about". This is where we first hear of his "dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine"…
about the saplings since they had no prior experience with them. The author reports leaf blights, red mites and caterpillars ate away any leaves on the trees which made the trees worthless (325). Henry Ford tried to make a little part of the Amazon jungle into the ideal civilization and failed. There were knife fights and food riots among the workers due to the diet restrictions set upon the workers and the different rules of life set up for them. The workers left when they made enough to get what…
symbolic of the damaged capitalist government. Again, Sinclair uses subtleties to convey his political thoughts, and in my opinion, this helps to draw the reader to his side of the argument. Upon first glance, the reader may assume that this takes place during the Great Depression of the 1920s, due to the rampant poverty and the widespread competition for jobs. However, with further research we learn that this book was written by Upton Sinclair in 1906. Therefore, we must assume that this story takes…
concepts more tangible for the reader. Symbolism is prevalent throughout The Jungle. From the beginning, Sinclair elaborates on two extended metaphors, the jungle and the machine. He also infuses animal analogies throughout the work. Jurgis possesses the “appetite of a wolf,” and he fights through a blizzard “plunging like a wounded buffalo.” The similes likening people to animals contribute to the jungle metaphor. Sinclair equates the city under capitalism to a forest, where “the branches of the…
keep quiet. The police were also corrupt. They let robbers go, and demanded a percentage of what the robbers had taken. The politicians placed friends on the city payroll, accepted bribes from criminals, and bribed the police to avoid arrest. The Jungle is, however, more than an advertisement for Socialism. It describes the horrors of the meat packing industry in great detail. People were forced to work from before sunrise to after sunset. In the meat preserving plants, the floors were never dry…
land of the free and opportunity. He and his family thought that hard work and commitment to good social values will win them success. Sinclair writes this to show the betrayal of American society. Jurgis responded to this situation by saying “I will work harder”. He persuaded the American people that many regarded with suspicion and hostility. Sinclair makes readers sympathize with their social values by emphasizing the fact that they…
pleasure. Fair… I think not. Politics are a great part of both novels, but specifically plague The Jungle. Each novel emphasizes that no matter how hard you try you can’t succeed unless you are unjust. It is known that both Steinbeck and Sinclair were Socialists. Their writings strongly emphasize this in that they stress they stress the demeaning of capitalism. In The Jungle, Sinclair does not mention any benefits of a capitalistic society. An example of this is Jurgis’ continuous struggle…
This conformist man is exactly who Sinclair Lewis wanted to show the reader, a man who's life is based on the ideals and standards of others. "Villages-overgrown towns-three -quarters of a million people still dressing, eating, building houses, attending church, to make an impression on their neighbors." (Lewis). This is what Lewis thought of American society and he used Babbitt to voice his opinions to his readers. In fact that passage was intended to be included in the original introduction of…
the jungle monkeys presented in the original story. However, it is in Disney’s film adaptation that ties explicit attributes frequently affiliated with African-Americans to the Bandar-Log. Like in the Kipling’s original story, the monkeys kidnap Mowgli and take him to their temple confines. One of the first differences between the book and the movie is presented when Mowgli is introduced to the monkey leader King Louie, whose voice acting is done by the jazz singer Louie Prima (The Jungle Book)…
(Carrington 186). Kids learn from these writings and from characters like Mowgli. As mentioned before, Mowgli comes into the jungle as a naked little child who does not know right from wrong and is quickly forced to learn quickly or else he will be killed. In every culture, the enemies will attack the weak. Mowgli makes an ideal example of a weak individual when he first enters the jungle. His limbs are so weak he can hardly walk. He dodges a few bullets early on, and he grows from every mistake. He learns…
descriptive. Sinclair used metaphors to add further depth, descriptiveness and understanding to his writing. In this speech the author states, “feel the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter.” By this, he is referring to the injustice suffered by the laborers being a large, immovable hand virtually smashing them in its fist. This metaphor added an interesting twist and gave the speech goers a visual that made it easier for them to comprehend. Sinclair also demonstrates…
if he survived, he would be too crippled to go on doing the work. When Jurgis is healthy and overflowing with life, he gets a job immediately. When he becomes an empty husk of his former self he is reduced to beggary. Even among beggars he finds a jungle of savage competition, in which the truly needy are often at a disadvantage. "And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of…