A Reality That’s Hard To Swallow
In Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle, the difficult lives of Lithuanian immigrants are depicted against the backdrop of the Chicago’s slaughterhouses and the beef trusts of the early 1900’s. In an attempt to highlight the failures of capitalism, corporate greed, and the exploitation of immigrate workers; he describes horrendous accounts of unscrupulous practices within the meatpacking industry. He intended to show the public how destructive the corporate conglomerates really were and how they actually were destroying the ability to achieve the American dream. This story has captivated me more than I expected. Maybe because I, today, feel the desire and struggle for the same dream that these characters felt,
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The Jungle met my personal narrative on so many levels, from the description of work being “stupefying, brutalizing…” (Sinclair, 483) leaving Elzbieta with “no strength for anything.” (Sinclair, 483) To the details and comparisons to workers being parts of a disposable machine, “She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence.” (Sinclair, 483) It is sad to say I know how these characters feel. I am lucky in the sense that my working conditions have never been as disgusting as those of the early 20th century slaughterhouses, but it is a shame that anyone should endure the unfortunate reality that hard work doesn’t always pay off the way it ideally should. I believe this is due to the profiteering off unethical labor practices, deceitful product accountability and price gouging on consumers, workers and suppliers. Industrial capitalism prevents those most vulnerable to economic struggles from climbing the social ladder. Through low wages and dangerous working conditions, Sinclair draws comparisons between the animals and workers being …show more content…
He believed socialism and public ownership of industries would help improve the lives of the poor and curb corporate corruption. But unfortunately his ideals never materialized past a brief movement of American Socialism in the early 1900’s, only to die out by the late 1940-50’s due to a rise in Communism and McCarthyism. With the intentions of The Jungle, Sinclair wanted to show the negative side effects of capitalism and expose the cheap labor, the disregard for workers welfare and improper treatment of immigrates by corporate industries. In the beginning Jurgis imagines being free, “ In that country, rich or poor, a man was free…”(Sinclair, 471) but freedom is an illusion when his life consists of nothing but working day in and day out, barely having enough to make ends meet and put food on the table, no rest, no joy, essentially locked in slavery by low wages. So much effort put forth by so many people in one family and they still were not able to fulfill the American dream and survive in their new land. “They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because that it had to do with wages and grocery bill and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone—it would
The difficult living situations for many people in the early 20th century were discussed in the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. The book describes an immigrant family’s struggle to survive after moving to America. The family experiences unsafe working conditions, dangerous child labor and poverty. Sinclair uses these images to shed light on some of America’s troubles, to disparage capitalism and to promote socialism.
Upon his 1906 publishing of The Jungle, Sinclair was coined as an avid “muckraker” when President Roosevelt addressed an audience in April of that year. When asked whether or not the novel provided a realistic account of workers conditions within the Chicago meat packing industry, Roosevelt accused Sinclair of being a liar in an attempt to discredit him. A large part of this was credited to Roosevelt’s personal distaste for Sinclair’s apparent link to the Socialist party but, Roosevelt was also unaware that Sinclair had worked undercover at the plant to gather first hand and accurate accounts. The Jungle shined light on the poor working conditions of workers in a meat packing facility. Throughout the novel, Sinclair gave gruesome examples of what workers went through each and every day. Each department of the facility was faced with its own risks and challenges, “There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
...abor reform through his book The Jungle, Upton Sinclair was able to show the world "how the system of graft and patronage functions, how the bosses, the politicians, the contractors, the criminals, the magistrates, and the police work hand in glove." He was also able to open the eyes of consumers and contribute to the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which proves this to be such an important piece of American literature.
Upton Sinclair's Purpose in Writing The Jungle Upton Sinclair wrote this book for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, he tries to awaken the reader to the terrible. living conditions of immigrants in the cities around the turn of the century. Chicago has the most potent examples of these. conditions.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
In 1906, socialist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book he hoped would awaken the American people to the deplorable conditions of workers in the meat packing industry. Instead, the book sent the country reeling with its description of filthy, rat infested plants, suspect meats processed and sold to consumers, and corrupt government inspectors. President Roosevelt became seriously concerned by the charges brought forth by Mr. Sinclair and determined the only way to protect consumers from unscrupulous business and unsafe food was to enforce regulation.
In the early 1900’s there was a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants coming to the eastern shores of America. Many were pulled to America because of its economic opportunity, freedom, need for labor and its beautiful country. Immigrants were excited to come to America and were pushed from their home countries because of food shortages, overpopulation, war and political instability. This was going on in an important era in American history called the “gilded age”. It was a time of economic growth, and industrialization but also had high percentages of poverty mainly in urban environments. The majority of the immigrants intended to advance out west but actually settled in the eastern cities. In the book The Jungle, Jargis and his family moved to the Americas and hoped to live the “American Dream” but it was the exact opposite when they arrived. Jurgis, his wife Ona, and the rest of the Lithuanian family struggled with working conditions, living conditions, health problems, and maintaining a stable workplace. They were all dealt with disgusting conditions in the boarding houses and a brutal working environment in Packingtown. In 1905, when the book was written, there were very little government regulations, especially in the meat packing industry, which led to unsafe working conditions and sanitation issues.
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Sinclair stated that “the animals’ faith emphasized [his] views of how industry treats humankind” (Sinclair 8). Machinery was more important and valuable than the human life, especially the life of an immigrant worker with no rights and freedoms. The author concluded that society was the jungle where people had to work hard in order to survive and escape the challenges of their living. Continuous struggle was needed to maintain the challenges and problems of people’s everyday life enabling them to maintain control over their life and to get the current opportunities. Exploitation of immigrants was another important problem covered in the book promoting specific changes in society. In conclusion, Sinclair made a very convincing argument and his writing was so influential it prompted government action.
Around the same time, journalists started to go undercover to experience first hand just how corrupt the system had become. One of the most influential mudruckers is Upton Sinclair, who went undercover in a meat packing factory and recorded his analysis of the conditions. Built off of the backs of immigrants, it is the very same people that are poorly mistreated but are the reason for the country's booming economy. Yet, a century ago, these migrant workers who devoted their health and time to the factories received a poor man’s salary. They worked long, strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process.
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” he exposes corruption in business and government and its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. The novel follows immigrant Jurgis Rudkus as he struggles against the slow ANNIHILATION of his family and is REBORN after discovering that socialism as a cure away to all capitalism’s problems. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the DANGEROUS, INHUMAINE conditions that workers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
Even though monopolies are illegal, public corruption allows companies to form and continues to be a problem today. In an article published by the Los Angeles, Anh Do
Capitalism underwent a severe attack at the hands of Upton Sinclair in this novel. By showing the misery that capitalism brought the immigrants through working conditions, living conditions, social conditions, and the overall impossibility to thrive in this new world, Sinclair opened the door for what he believed was the solution: socialism. With the details of the meatpacking industry, the government investigated and the public cried out in disgust and anger. The novel was responsible for the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. With the impact that Sinclair must have known this book would have, it is interesting that he also apparently tried to make it fuction as propaganda against capitalism and pro-socialism.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.