The Role Of The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

234 Words1 Page

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.

Show More
Related

  • Echoes In The City Of The Angels Analysis

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    One example to depict Los Angeles as a frontier town is how “Other sidewalk booths, like those ordinarily used as dispensaries of hot doughnuts and coffee, offered wild-cat mining shares, oil stock and real estate in some highly speculative suburb” (29). This shows the developmental activity in Los Angeles due to the real estate, the oil stock, and the wild-cat mining shares. Many people come to Los Angeles hoping to become rich and strike gold. Los Angeles is a frontier town that has a plethora of oil. In Adamic’s “Laughing in the Jungle,” he characterizes some of LA’s citizens as seeing “a tremendous opportunity to enrich themselves beyond anything they could have hoped for ten or even five years ago, and they mean to make the most of it” (52). This characterization of LA’s citizens is another way of Adamic depicting LA as a frontier town due to the exploitative activity that he describes. Another example of how Adamic portrays LA as a frontier town is because “Los Angeles is America. A jungle. Los Angeles grew up, suddenly, planlessly, under the stimuli of the adventurous spirit of millions of people and the profit motive” (54). Adamic clearly depicts the exploitative activity associated with LA as a frontier town. Another author who illustrates the exploitative activity to establish LA as a frontier town is Upton Sinclair. In

    Read More

  • The Land Of Opportunity And Dreams In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1875 Words  | 4 Pages

    The United States of America is known as the land of opportunity and dreams. People dream of migrating to this nation for a chance of a better a life. This belief has been around for many years, ever since the birth of the United States; therefore it’s a factor in which motivate many people migrate to the United States. Upton Sinclair, author of the Jungle, narrates the life of a Lithuanian family and there struggles with work, crime, family loss, and survival in the city of Packingtown. Sinclair expresses her disgust as well as the unbelievable truth of life in the United States involving politics, corruption, and daily struggle that many suffered through in the 19th and 20th century.

    Read More

  • The Broken American Dream Exposed in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Values Of The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Economic Tensions And Historical Conflicts In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    2240 Words  | 5 Pages

    Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

    Read More

  • The American Dream in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan states that, "in the state of nature mans life is nasty, brutish and short". In depression era America, no greater truth could be said. There were millions unemployed, largely unskilled and living on the margins of society. The lowest of the low were the migrant labourers travelling from place to place trying to scratch a living. They often had to travel illegally by freight car with all its consequent dangers. Their life expectancy was low, crime was rampant and despair was a fellow traveller. This is the setting of John Steinbeck's, 'Of Mice and Men'.

    Read More

  • The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

    1571 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.

    Read More

  • Social Darwinism In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    Social Darwinism is the central theme that dominated the novel “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. Upton had demonstrated successfully how social Darwinism is not the way for a functional society to thrive, thus providing a solution like Socialism to the readers. Social Darwinism, putting into the simplest context, is the theory of society where the rich survives and the poor dies; whoever could make the most money and bribe the most power would win the game, while for the people who have to find job and money are the one designated to fail. Jurgis Rudkus was a Lithuanian immigrant that came to America seeking fortune for his family, thinking that he would achieve the “American Dream” if only he retained his diligence with work. Sadly he is not getting any prosperity, “The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.” (Sinclair 62) He soon found out he would not be able to gain success, but only through corruption and later Socialism.

    Read More

  • Comparing The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    The “American Dream” is a characteristic of the United States that includes a set of shining ideals where liberty comprises the chance for wealth and success that are accomplished through laborious work in a community with few barricades. Thus, in the time period between 1905-06, thousands of people in the world immigrated to America in aspirations of building a better life and making the “American Dream” come true, despite the fact that there were a lot of unknown hardships waiting for them ahead on the way to achieve their dream. The characters Jurgis Rudkus and his family in Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, also did the same. The Jungle is a tale of difficulties and trouble, some successes and countless failures as a family attempts to

    Read More

  • Worker Exploitation In The Jungle

    473 Words  | 1 Pages

    The 1906 novel, The Jungle talked about some of Sinclair’s concerns. Worker exploitation was one of his concerns. This novel also showed how companies would sell rancid vermin-infested meat and how it was processed. Most of the workers lived in Packingtown, which were immigrants and their children. Northern and Central Europe immigrants were mainly Protestants, even though numerous Irish and German Catholics moved as well. In the twentieth century, about nine million immigrants came to America. Many immigrants moved to Chicago rather than any city besides New York. The immigrants were attracted by the construction jobs in the downtown area and they would work in huge manufacturing firms.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1912 Words  | 4 Pages

    Author Upton Sinclair published the novel The Jungle in 1906. In his novel, Sinclair wrote of a Lithuanian immigrant family who moved to Chicago in the early twentieth century, who was struggling to make ends meet. The author explained how immigrants in this time era experienced difficulties adapting to the new society of America, and its conditions. Sinclair’s novel described how immigrants’ lives, experiences, and choices were effected by social class, racism, and sexism. He produced very strong examples, some more significant than others, which illustrated how immigrants were effected.

    Read More

  • The American Dream in John Steinbeck's East of Eden

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    even those who do not have a lot of money.  Faye obtains her wealth by

    Read More

  • Historical Analysis Of The Jungle

    994 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s had a dramatic effect on economic and social life around the globe. The economy of industrializing nations shifted from agriculture to manufacturing and from rural to urban. Thanks to innovation and technology, energy production and manufacturing, factories churned out large quantities of new products at lower prices. Almost overnight, cities swelled to support the new industries. Soon people were flocking to the growing city looking for work and a better life. The factory life did not live up to its promise. The workers had few rights. Wages were low, hours were long. Working conditions were often unsafe: unemployment, disability, or death was always just an accident away. These harsh working conditions were common at the turn of the 20th century. In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a novel about the American meat packing industry.

    Read More

  • Edward Albee's American Dream

    1925 Words  | 4 Pages

    Daddy, in “The Ameican Dream,” is muted by a wife who only views him as a source of financial and emotional validation. Mommy claims, “I have the right to live off you because I married you, and because I used to let you get on top of me and bump your uglies; and I have the right to all your money when you die” (Albee 67). Here Albee illuminates how the commitment of marriage is reduced to a sexual-financial transaction. Daddy is less a man than a commodified husband. Daddy, during the course of the play, scarcely utters an original thought, rather he just acts as an echo of what would otherwise be Mommy’s shallow monologue. Their conversation is hollow. Mommy exclaims “... and so, I bought it” and Daddy repeats “and so you bought it” (Albee 59). When Daddy fails to reiterate what Mommy says she scolds him “What did I just say?” (Albee 59). In the play there are two instances where Daddy intones something other than accord with mommy. The first is when he asks Mommy to allow Grandma to stay up past noon. In second instance of Daddy’s weak defiance he wants to weigh “the pros and ...” of opening the door (73). Ellipses show his hesitance to even finish a thought that opposes his wife’s command. Mommy clips this conversation by refusing to argue and commenting on Daddy’s masculinity. Though his character seems submissively acquiescent to Mommy he does not try to provide more than a superficial validation of Mommy. He makes no effort to provide any insights for her. In the stage directions Albee instructs the performer to make Daddy “snap[...] to” as if he were sleeping and “toneless” when he listens to Mommy. Neither character invests in their spouse. This lack of relationship is reflected in their superficial...

    Read More

  • The Importance Of The American Dream In Literature

    1305 Words  | 3 Pages

    As we are looking through this year in English and all the literature we have read there is one thing in common. A dream. The dream of making their life better. The dream that shapes people into who they are today. My dream is to have a job that I can work outside.

    Read More

More about The Role Of The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Open Document