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Dustin Riddle
Writing 121
Mrs. Ross
The Jungle, “Hunger, Desire, Disaster”
The setting and characters of Upton Sinclair’s story “The Jungle,” are critical to the reader’s understanding of the disastrous conditions that immigrants faced in their search of a better life and that the yearning and craving, of the established businesses, for prosperity were the ultimate causes for the shameless conditions that were put upon innocent societies. The “Packingtown” horrors are a combination and an example of the out of control measures that the wealthy took and that challenged immigrants and the poor. The tragic life of Jurgis Rudkus, the main character of the story, and his bride Ona were set into motion by decisions that were made out of anticipation,
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Upton Sinclair parallels two story lines, the conditions of “Packingtown” and the way of life for the people pursuing the “American Dream” and intertwined those stories in his pursuit to bring attention to his beliefs on the effects of capitalism on this country.
Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite arrived in Chicago, immigrants from Lithuanian, looking for a better life and hearing the promises of higher wages in America, but soon learned this was a naïve fantasy. Jurgis had worked hard to save enough money to bring not only his future wife to America but many of his and Ona’s family members. After arriving and settling into an overcrowded filthy boarding house Jurgis found work in “Packingtown” at the slaughterhouse. Other family members found work too, but Jurgis would not let Ona or Ona’s stepmother, Teta Elzbieta, work. Jurgis and Ona were married and by tradition they would hold their veselija in their new found homeland. The custom of the wedding feast was for family members as well as friends and neighbors to help with the cost of the celebration. Ona was skeptical of getting help with the cost
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Jurgis hurt his ankle on the job and could not work. Jurgis’s father, Dede, died from the horrible conditions at his work. Ona went to work for Mrs. Henderson who ran the local prostitution ring. Mrs. Henderson’s prostitutes were Ona’s co-workers. The children of Teta Elzbieta were sent to find jobs. It had always been the plan that they would attend school but those dreams were given up out of necessity. The sacrifices did not end with having the children work. The conditions of all the work places were horrendous. Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. “Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between master and slave.” (106) In this quote, the lives of the struggling immigrants are aligned with the business men or women who are trying to survive the economic oppression because of the capitalists. Sinclair associates the prostitution ring with
The period of time running from the 1890’s through the early 1930’s is often referred to as the “Progressive Era.” It was a time where names such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller stood for the progress of America and their great contributions to American industry and innovation. This chapter however, has a much darker side. Deplorable working conditions, rampant political corruption and power hungry monopolies and trusts threatened the working class of America and the steady influx of European immigrants hoping to make a better life for themselves and their families. What started as a grass-roots movement pushing for political reform at the local and municipal levels soon began to encompass
Dorothy Day had a curious personality and a very imaginative mind. When she attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she wrote in her biography The Long Loneliness, "my reading began to be socially conscious" (Day 36). It was 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.
In 1900, there were over 1.6 million people living in Chicago, the country's second largest city. Of those 1.6 million, nearly 30% were immigrants. Most immigrants came to the United States with little or no money at all, in hope of making a better life for themselves. A city like Chicago offered these people jobs that required no skill. However, the working and living conditions were hazardous and the pay was barely enough to survive on. This is the bases for Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle.
After Jurgis works in the packing house for a while, a man tells him in Lithuanian that he can now become a citizen. Jurgis is then registered to vote, and told about one of the candidates. Nothing is said of the other candidate, so he votes for the man. that he is told of, and receives money for this vote. Another problem faced by most of the immigrants of Chicago is making a living from it.
conditions of a Lithuanian family that moved to the US, and had to work, live, and die for the food companies in Chicago. “The Jungle” spurred a movement in the American
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.
A well-discussed debate in today’s economy is the issues concerning immigrants and their yearning desire to become American citizens. As displayed in The Jungle, a rather perturbing novel about the trials and ruthless temptations early America presents to a Lithuanian family, adjusting to a new surroundings and a new way of life is quite difficult. To make matters worse, language barriers and lack of domestic knowledge only seem to entice starvation and poverty among newly acquired citizens, who simply wish to change their social and economic lives to better themselves and their families. Such is the case of Jurgis Rudkus and his extended family, consisting of cousins, in-laws, and their multitude of children. Natives to the country of Lithuania, Jurgis and his family decide that, after Jurgis and his love, Ona, marry, they will move to Chicago to find work in order to support their family.
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
The two are getting ready to get married and hold a celebration in the meatpacking district. A Lithuanian tradition, people who have not eaten are supposed to line the doorway and be fed at the wedding reception. One can imagine how many people would have been there. In the Gilded Age, money and food were hard to come by. If a family was not making enough money that day, the family might not be able to eat but one meal all day.
“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.
The busy season for the shop she was working on came and the owner of the shop kept demanding for what we call overtime. She got fired after she said, “I only want to go home. I only want the evening to myself!.” Yezierska was regretful and bitter about what happened because she ended up in cold and hunger. After a while she became a trained worker and acquired a better shelter. An English class for foreigners began in the factory she was working for. She went to the teacher for advice in how to find what she wanted to do. The teacher advised her to join the Women’s Association, where a group of American women helps people find themselves. One of the women in the social club hit her with the reality that “America is no Utopia.” Yezierska felt so hopeless. She wondered what made Americans so far apart from her, so she began to read the American history. She learned the difference between her and the Pilgrims. When she found herself on the lonely, untrodden path, she lost heart and finally said that there’s no America. She was disappointed and depressed in the
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, he exposes corruption in both business and politics, as well as its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. In a protest novel, the ills of society are dramatized for its effect on its characters in the story. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the lethal and penurious conditions that laborers 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
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.
Throughout her childhood, the narrator’s parents hardly interact unless they are fighting which leaves the narrator confused about their relationship and why they stay together when they seemed to have nothing in common. Through pressing Vadim for information on his relationship with his wife, the narrator begins to fill in pieces of information about her own parents. Vadim explains that after his hard work as a taxi driver “every penny [he] earns he turns over to [his wife]” (Nunez, p.134). The narrator finds this strange, but understands as her father “work[ed] two jobs” and still “did not make much money” (Nunez, p.12). With this comparison the narrator understands that money is “the first order of business… in [a] new country” and that