In the book, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair portrays a Lithuanian immigrant family traveling to America in hopes to pursue the American dream. The American Dream is the ideology that every person in America should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and taking initiative. Jurgis and his family were very optimistic on their quest to seek the fortunes that America claims to be able to provide. However, Jurgis Rudkus goes through many obstacles that take a toll in his life only to find out that the American dream is nothing but an overrated fantasy that is virtually impossible. One of the first obstacles that Jurgis encounters is when his family is in search for a house in America. Ona and …show more content…
Ona’s boss Phillip Conor is a character that reappears in the story numerous times as a man with enough power to control Jurgis’s family. Prior to Jurgis finding out, Ona and Jurgis’s relationship was drifting apart. He starts to feel a sense of emptiness in his life, and begins to drink. His relationship with Ona is very important to him because the main reason he came to America was to be able to support and keep Ona and his family happy . He feels as though he has failed to do so when Ona starts to isolate herself and their relationship start to wither. Jurgis responds to Ona’s harassment and rape from Phillip Conor in a very reckless way. He is enraged with anger, and decides to find Conor. Jurgis then attacks him viciously, which lands him in prison. This is a turning point in the story because his first attack with Phillip Conor was the first time where he has hit rock bottom. Jurgis never did something blown out of proportion until this he found out about Ona’s sexual harassment. This is due to his constant reminder that his purpose in America is to provide for his family. However, he fails this when he reminds himself in prison “Why punish him be leaving three week women and six helpless children starve and freeze?” (147). Getting thrown in prison meant that he abandoned his family …show more content…
Jurgis finds out that his son dies from a freak accident, in which Antanas drowned in the mire of mud in the streets. Jurgis loved his son with an overwhelming devotion. He saw his son as a sense of hope for him to continue doing back breaking work in order to provide for Antanas. However, when his son dies, Jurgis starts to lose a sense in motivation to work or purse the American dream anymore. This is easy to assume because Sinclair states “ When his wife died, he went to the nearest saloon, but he did not do that now, though he had a week’s worth of wage in his pocket” (193). At this point in Jurgis’s life, he was so use to the misery that when Antanas died, he no longer felt pain. He sounds as though he is hopeless and sees that he no longer has a purpose to succeed in America
The concept of American dream originated in the 1600s, even before America was a country (“Ten Facts”). The forever changing American dream, has instilled in American literature the choices people are forced to make regarding their aspirations. Every generation has changed the common idea of what the American dream entails. There are immense possibilities as to how the common person interprets the American dream. The American dream inspires people to make their own decisions and prompts people that there is always another possibility (Izaguirre). In American literature the theme of choices and possibilities is prominent.
Sinclair's novel is meant to entirely reject the capitalist system and to bring in its place a socialist system. In this novel, capitalism and its exploitation of the immigrants and other workers, are in fact shown to be tools of the capitalist bosses, used as another means to control and mislead them. In Sinclair's novel the broken dreams of Jurgis Rudkis and his fellow Lithuanian immigrants, unions are meant to be institutions which give false hope to the workers. They live in utterly dreadful circumstances and are exploited like animals by their capitalist bosses. The women are forced to work at an inhuman pace, lose money if they cannot, and then fired if the complain. (106). And the men in the packinghouses like slaves in hell. When Jurgis is lucky enough to be picked for work, he finds working conditions to hardly fitting of the American Dream for which he left his native Lithuania. Sinclair is relentless in providing page after page of detailed horrors the immigrants faced everyday at work, "there were the beef luggers who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerators cars, a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years.......of..... al those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb (101).
In the beginning, Jurgis was a man of great muscles and strength. “…and he was young, and a giant besides. There was too much health in him. He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten.”(23) He was a country boy, meaning he was use to lifting things and from that became strong, which was a physical feature Packingtown seemed to like, leaving Jurgis excited knowing he could easily become employed as he and his family arrived in Chicago.
The life of Jurgis Rudkus, from the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, shares many parallels to the life of the working class in American society during the period 1865 to 1910 that limits the freedom of the working class. Even though it is stated on paper that working class citizens such as Jurgis are equals and just as free as the upper class citizens, people like Jurgis are not truly “free” because the social and political forces at the time are limiting their ability to exercise their freedom, trapping them in an endless circle of poverty and despair.
In the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, many immigrants came to the United States to pursue the American Dream. The American Dream is a belief that anyone can have success and prosperity through hard work in a society where upward social mobility is possible. The values and ideals of the American dream consist of democracy, equality, fairness, justice, and liberty. In Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, he portrays through a Lithuanian immigrant family the hardships immigrants faced while seeking a better life in America. One member of the Lithuanian immigrant family is Jurgis Rudkus, who marries a young woman named Ona Lukoszait. After they get married, Jurgis and Ona move into a home in Chicago with some of Ona’s family members. As the family struggles to pay for the house, they undertake stressful jobs and become workers of cruel and selfish employers. Although employers exploit Jurgis, Jurgis continues to tell Ona that he “will work harder” (Sinclair, 22) to help them achieve the American Dream. Upton Sinclair portrays how capitalism attacks the values of the American Dream through the ugly effects of capitalism, such as exploitation, poor working conditions, dishonesty, manipulation, and corruption.
During the Gilded age, the United States used its growing industrial development and began to appear as a profitable powerhouse. During this time America had a sufficient economic capital to endure such hasty industrialization; however it was a different story when it came to labor. The solution to this problem was European immigration. Since many European immigrants came to America looking for work opportunities, they unintentionally provided an alternative of cheap labor for American factories and businesses. These Europeans were thrilled to come to the United States. They saw America as a land of opportunity, and a chance to live the "American Dream". Upon arrival to this dreamland of opportunity, the United State's capitalistic society ruined many ambitions of said immigrants and embedded them into a harsh routine that controlled each aspect of their lives. In Upton Sinclair’s story The Jungle we are introduced to Jurgis Rudkus and his family, they are poor Lithuanian immigrants who came to America in search of an easier life, only to end up working in Packingtown also known as the meatpacking plants of Chicago. To some readers Jurgis and his family face massive hardships such as cruel and hazardous working conditions, poverty and famine, corrupt businessmen who take their money and crooked politicians who take advantage of them. To other readers, Jurgis and his family made rash and senseless decisions on their own. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle accentuates the manipulation of many immigrants as they attempt to achieve the unachievable "American Dream".
Jurgis once hope to embrace as he lived the “American dream” is nothing more than
People from all around the world have dreamed of coming to America and building a successful life for themselves. The "American Dream" is the idea that, through hard work and perseverance, the sky is the limit in terms of financial success and a reliable future. While everyone has a different interpretation of the "American Dream," some people use it as an excuse to justify their own greed and selfish desires. Two respected works of modern American literature, The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman, give us insight into how the individual interpretation and pursuit of the "American Dream" can produce tragic results.
The concept of the American Dream has always been that everyone wants something in life, no matter if it is wealth, education, financial stability, safety, or a decent standard of living. In addition, everyone will try to strive to get what they want. The American Dream, is said to be that everyone should try and get what they hope they can get in life. In the play A Raisin in the Sun the author Hansberry tells us about a family where each has an American Dream, and Hughes in the poem “ Let America be America Again “is telling us to let America be the America that was free for us to obtain The American Dream. Hansberry and Langston see America like as a place to find the dream desired, although they also see limitation to obtain the American Dream, such as poverty, freedom, inequality, racism and discrimination.
In the early twentieth century, one after the other, steamboats rolled into the new land shore hauling immigrants by the two thousand, each optimistic about their plans to forge the American Dream. Well into the Industrial Revolution, it was a promising time for production and business, however, only for those in power. The hopeful and tireless could not climb the ladder of opportunity without stepping on top of others to get ahead. Jurgis, the main character of The Jungle, represents this idea as he battles capitalism first failing with hard work and later with corruption. Upton Sinclair, the author, develops the idea that rising up social classes is restricted by individual traits that limit people from changing between the classes. These same defining qualities can be found in our social classes today. Because of these barriers, there
Jory and Belen’s background have affected their views on the world. Because of the impacts of people in their lives, their views on reality completely differ. Jory and Belen experiences with the family as a unit differ; Jory only experienced it when he started his own family with Belen. Their desire to maintain their family has helped the journey of both characters. Jory is one who always lived in the actual reality and grasped the truth about the world in a quicker fashion compared to Belen, someone who lives in her own world of materialism and desire. Through the realities they lived, the slowly debunked the myths of the “American Dream.” Their realities provided a venue for them to grasp the complexity of the “American Dream”. However, in the end the journeys of Jory and Belen reconcile by occupying the realms of the actual reality.
Each character in the novel has their own interpretation of the ‘American Dream – the pursuit of happiness’ as they all lack happiness due to the careless nature of American society during the Jazz Age. The American Dreams seems almost non-existent to those whom haven’t already achieved it.
The portrayal of the ‘American Dream’—that one could start out at the bottom and work their way up to become rich—was appealing to immigrants because it convinced them they could accomplish this easier in America rather than in their home country. In the 19th century, leading into the early 20th century, America had a flood of immigrants due to the high demand for labour workers. Stockyards were some of the earliest rising companies of the U.S.A., which provided many job opportunities. In 1904 there was a failed strike against a stockyard in Chicago which attracted an American writer named Upton Sinclair, which is stated in the introduction of The Jungle (14). He developed a motif to write the muckraking novel, The Jungle published in 1906.
The American Dream has been the ideal way of life to every citizen. Equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and persistence allows people to strive for The American Dream. For others, The Dream might have a different meaning to what the think is achievable. In the essay, “Is the American Dream even possible” John Steinbeck makes accusations about the American Dream and the credibility of it. The American Dream in Steinbeck's perspective is that in reality, The Dream is there to believe but not there to its full potential.
In conclusion, the American dream targeted the individual working hard in the pursuit to become successful and wealthy, with high-quality job and prosperity. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the American dream symbolizes being free from any kind of restrictions and the ability to have the pleasure in the wide-open Western edge. However, The Great Gatsby criticizes the American dream due to moral and social value decay of the society.