The Jungle, a novel by Upton Sinclair, contained many unique characters which were used as color for this story. The character of Jurgis Rudkis was the strong central character that the author developed as the cornerstone of this novel. The story was based on the life Rudkis led in the town of Packington. The remaining characters in the story merely made appearances, and aided in the tale of Jurgis’s experiences.
Mr. Rudkis, originally from Lithuania, was a strong, overpowering person. His initial appearance was during his wedding day in Packington. The celebration was delayed because of his family’s desire to provide Jurgis and his bride with a wedding feast. This problem was happily solved and he eventually worked at various positions in the town. Jurgis, someone who believes in the value of hard work, was naïve in thinking that anything can be accomplished through the application of it.
Jurgis was forced to send his family to work in order to survive. He was horrified to discover how the meat packers, where he worked, took advantage of their employees. The workers at the plant had no benefits, worked long hours, and were paid poor wages. Jurgis decided to join a Union and took a stand on the issues with some other family members. For the first time in his life, he saw the corruption of a town and it’s employers. His solution to most problems, “I will work harder”, no longer sustained him. He had believed hard work could conquer all, but found that it could not beat the corruption that spread like a cancer in this town.
Jurgis soon becomes injured at the plant and bed-ridden. Ironically, this was also a special time for him. He finally got to know his son and spent quality time with him. It was also a time of depression for Jurgis. He deteriorated and became a wreck of his old self. Eventually, he returned for work. He was arrested for beating Ona’s boss, who raped her. His family, so important to him, fell apart. Most things that he worked so hard for were lost. His wife and two children died.
Jurgis reacted to his tragedies by living like a tramp. He turned to drink and the life of a beggar, landing in jail again. A life of crime in politics and theft followed. Jurgis could have risen to the top with the crooked life, but met Ona’s rapist again and was arrested.
The Jungle "The Jungle" portrays the lower ranks of the industrial world as the scene of a naked struggle for survival. Where workers not only are forced to compete with each other but, if they falter, are hard pressed to keep starvation from their door and a roof over their heads. With unions weak and cheap labor plentiful, a social Darwinist state of "the survival of the fittest" exists. The real story revolves around the integration and eventual disintegration of Jurgis Rudkis and his family
He did most of his work focusing on how the politicians are corrupting the United States and how it will be made a better place; he also wanted political and social reform. The jungle was published in the 1906.it was a grim indication that led the government to a regulation of the food industry inspection. The jungle was specifically written to draw the government's attention to the working condition faced by laborers in America. Especially the immigrants like"jurgis" who came from Lithuanian
The Jungle, due to the federal legislation it provoked, became one of the most impressionistic books of the twentieth century. Americans were horrified to learn about the terrible sanitation under which their meat products were packed. They were even more horrified to learn that the labels listing the ingredients in canned meat products were blatant fabrications. The revelation that rotten and diseased meat was sold without a single consideration for public health infuriated American citizens. They
The Jungle From the point of view of history, The Jungle, is both a comment on and a product of its own times. Those times most definitely need to be viewed in relation to what happened in the last half of the nineteenth century. This incredible time period saw the making of great industries and great fortunes (for those who were in control of the industries). So far as the relationship between business and government was concerned, it was a time of laissez-faire, where government had very little
From the start of the Civil War until the 1920's Chicago was home to the countries largest meat packing facilities; Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris. As much as 85 percent of consumer meat in the US came from Chicago's vast packing plants. Behind the companies were around 25,000 employees, making up almost half of the entire US meatpacking work force. Most of the employees were underpaid immigrants who spoke little to no english and made a meager one cent an hour. The highest an
Chicago that Sinclair found the setting of the book that would bring him to fame. He first won recognition by the jungle in 1906. This book is a powerful realistic study of social conditions in the stockyards and packing plants of Chicago. It aided in the passing of pure food laws. This novel illustrates how greed and ruthless competition has made the turn of the century into a ruthless jungle. “Take or be Taken” was the guiding rule, and everyone was someone else’s prey. The meatpacking district of Chicago
Discovery in the Jungle As the sun rose from its bed, most of the boys were awake apart from Piggy. As the older boys discussed what they were going to do that day, the littleuns were looking for fruit in the forest. Luke was about 7 years old and had black hair. He was one of the older littleuns and he was not scared to go further in the jungle. His eyes were a light blue. He was popular around his group and most littleuns liked him. The littleuns were walking around in groups like
Written in 1906, The Jungle conveys the life of Jurgis Rudkus, his wife Ona Lukoszaite and the torturous events that consist of their life. In the time of their arrival to Chicago from Lithuania, Jurgis and his family experience the hardships that come along with being immigrants in America. While in Packingtown, the center of housing for all the Lithuanian community, the family signs an agreement to buy a house; this unfortunately came along with hidden costs as well as the house being in terrible
penned The Jungle in 1905. It is the story of Jurgis Rudkus from Lithuania (62), who along with his family, came to America seeking prosperity (64). Along this journey they will encounter every conceivable hardship. They end up arriving in the stockyards of Chicago, a place termed “Packingtown” (70). Yet even though Sinclair uses the “metaphor, ‘jungle’ (denoting) the ferocity of dog-eat-dog competition, the barbarity of exploitative work, wilderness of urban life” (Phelps 1).The title The Jungle was not
George of the Jungle The film “George of the Jungle”, directed by Sam Weisman is a romantic comedy and parody. In other words, it fully rips off Tarzan and makes a classic story seem stupid. In the beginning of the film the audience is shown a short cartoon about how George came to be in the jungle. When he was a baby George was flying over the jungle in a plane when it crashed. The passengers never found him and so apes raised him. Then the scene it cut to the present when a woman called Ursula
In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis is the most complex character throughout the novel. He demonstrates many characteristics that sets him aside from the other characters and also utilizes the title of villain. He is not necessarily an evil man by nature, but does portray an evil life by existence. 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
Critical Analysis of Jungle Night 	The speaker of the poem is a civilian observer, probably a local. There is a sense of tension and fear in the speaker’s tone. The speaker uses an observatory tone in the poem, a combination between 1st and 3rd person. The author shows us that the speaker is an observer when he says "They are not there…/You finger the trigger of your Bren." (ll. 8&10) You can clearly see that the author creates tension when he says "Half-fearing
The Hero of The Jungle The novel, The Jungle, shows the life of the main character, Jurgis Ruckus. Jurgis is a Lithuanian man who moves to the Packingtown district of Chicago, Illinois (Jungle 1). Once he arrives in Packingtown, Jurgis marries Ona, who is also from Lithuania (Jungle 1). Ona and Jurgis start a family together, and they work in factories that contain awful working conditions and receive terrible treatment and low wages from their employers. They live with Ona’s family and constantly
Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle is a political statement piece that was written to show the conditions of immigrants workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sinclair, through weeks of extensive research, gathered enough information to form a story based on the evidence he had gathered. Although The Jungle is a work of fiction, Sinclair’s novel is still said to be a primary source due the the fact that it was based on research he was doing personally, it was written near
In “The Jungle” Sinclair describes the road taken as an immigrant through the eyes of a newlywed couple and their family and friends in Chicago during the 1900’s. The point is to show just how tough it was for immigrants in working, living, and anything else back in the 1900’s. Life was hard and they had to try many different ways to survive. Having decent working and living conditions were what they strived for and towards the end of the reading they realized that for themselves and began to fight