The Hardships Of Being An Immigrant In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

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Recommended: Ethnic and racial discrimination against immigrants

The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) describes the hardships of being an immigrant. Such as, not knowing the language, low pay, and keeping a job. One piece of evidence to support that not only knowing, but understanding the language is sometimes life or death, is when Ona and Jurgis go to buy a house and they are charged a whole lot more money than they were going to buy it for. They also had to pay $12 more per month just because they could not understand what they were getting into.(Sinclair 55 ) Another piece of evidence to support that not only knowing but understanding the language is sometimes critical to survival is again, when they go to buy the house. They did not realize how much time it would take to pay off the debt and actually own the house. "A monthly rental of twelve dollars, for a period of eight years and four months!" (Sinclair 55). The lithuanian realtor who sold them the house had neglected to mention that it was rent and not a home. The reason they did not like that it was a rental was because, if they missed their rent by a day it was …show more content…

The family and Jurgis are always on a rollercoaster of a lot of money and bankrupt mostly because their jobs pay fluctuates so much. Their pay always relies on the boss so they control it so that means they (the bosses) can basically make the immigrants work as hard as they want them to or threaten to not pay them at all.(Sinclair 163) In this passage, Ona is raped and taken to a brothel because her boss (Conner) threatens to fire her and put her whole family on a blacklist if she does not do what he says. Another reason low pay is bad is because it is one of the reasons so many people died from diseases, they could not afford to pay for medical attention. By the end of the book 7 out of the starting 12 people die from just medical injuries that can be treated with proper care. These examples show how bad low pay

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