In the early 1900's lots of immigrants immigrated to the United States, specifically Chicago. They had the dream of success believing that their lives would change for the better and the change would bring them success. Advertisements normally makes people hope to grow, because they show a happy future. They show amazing jobs with high pay, and good working conditions, which seems like an opportunity. Unfortunate these people didn´t know that when they try this type of life their hopes will be crushed because they will be in front of a capitalist world. ”Socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not Throughout the novel, we see Jurgis as a strong man that his only incentive is his family. His hopes are destroyed by the bad working and living condition he was going through in Chicago. The author expresses his vision of how businessman exploit workers by capitalism, saying that labor in factories couldn’t make more money or even they couldn’t keep track of how much they were working in a day “during the summer the packing-houses were in full activity again” (Sinclair, 111). If in the first place Jurgis had known what was the labor union he would keep on track with his work hours and his payment, so in other words, joining the union would avoid all the complications he and his family passed with their jobs. They could have had more rights or an access to a healthcare like an insurance, even they could have got more money for the extra hours he He shows the struggle for survival of the employees in Packing town while having an abusive boss who only wants your production and time to be rich. It is like employees are being treated as slaves because immigrants could not break out the economic or social status they were chain too. ”there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything” (Olaudah xx). This cycle of poverty and slavery is performed by the capitalist owners of the packing factories and the corrupt politicians that work in government ”Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” as a labor exposé. He hoped that the book, which was billed as “the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of wage slavery,” would lead to improvements for the people to whom he dedicated it, “the workingmen of America” (Cohen). In Chicago at that times was hard to find or keep a job. These jobs didn’t help support the lifestyles of workers and their families. Apart from that other difficulties may appear in the lives of workers because since they worked in bad condition their health was at risk. They couldn’t have medical care because of their poverty and because they didn’t have an insurance from part of the factory where they worked. There were unions for their rights, but most of the workers
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.
Jurgis comes to America as a strong willed man looking for better opportunities for his family and himself but is slowly crushed by the hard struggles of a working class man in a society where capitalism is dominant. Sinclair portrays socialism as the resolution to the story but especially to Jurgis’ struggling life. By showing the torment that the working class had to go through because of capitalism, Sinclair wanted to promote the wondrous changes that socialism was going to bring. Sinclair highlights the terrible situations caused by capitalism but pushes for socialism through Jurgis’ intent in finding work, the struggling working class, and the inequality of the men in a capitalistic society.
...es. By adapting socialist ideals into a capitalist economic and social system a prosperous society results.
“The Jungle” novel was written by an American journalist/ novelist name Upton Sinclair in 1906. “The Jungle” made a big hit and became his best-selling novel because it revealed so well about the economical and social reality during that time. The book mainly described about how unsanitary the meat packing industry was operated in Chicago and the miserable life of the immigrants going along with the industry. Through the story around the life and family of Jurgis Rudjus, a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with the belief to change their life and live in a better condition, Sinclair expresses that “The Jungle” is a symbol of capitalism. Sinclair’s contempt for capitalist society is present throughout the novel, demonstrated in the eagerness of Jurgis to work, the constant struggle for survival of the workers in Packing town and the corruption of the man at all levels of the society. Also, the author promotes socialism as a standard political society to replace capitalism.
Jurgis attends a rally where a speaker says that “If more people convert to socialism,
The novel "The Jungle", is a hybrid of history, literature, and propaganda. It was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair, to demonstrate the control big business had over the average working man, and his family. Sinclair was one of the most famous muckrakers in history; he exposed scandals and political corruption in the early nineteen hundreds (Literature 572). He attempted to show his idea of the solution to this problems of the times: socialism. At the time Sinclair wrote, communism was not yet around, so the anti-socialistic fears were not yet aroused.
Employment is hard to find and hard to keep and a job isn’t always what one hoped for. Sometimes jobs do not sufficiently support our lifestyles, and all too frequently we’re convinced that our boss’s real job is to make us miserable. However, every now and then there are reprieves such as company holiday parties or bonuses, raises, promotions and even a half hour or hour to eat lunch that allows escape from monotonous workloads. Aside from our complaints, employment today for majority of American’s isn’t totally dreadful, and there always lies opportunity for promotion. American’s did not always experience this reality in their work places though, and not long past are days of abysmal and disgusting work conditions. In 1906 Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was published. His novel drastically transformed the way Americans felt about the unmitigated power corporations wielded in the ‘free’ market economy that was heavily propagandized at the turn of the century. Corporations do not have the same unscrupulous practices today because of actions taken by former President Theodore Roosevelt who felt deeply impacted by Sinclair’s famous novel. Back in early 1900’s in the meatpacking plants of Chicago the incarnation of greed ruled over the working man and dictated his role as a simple cog within an enormous insatiable industrial machine. Executives of the 1900’s meatpacking industry in Chicago, IL, conspired to work men to death, obliterate worker’s unions and lie to American citizens about what they were actually consuming in order to simply acquire more money.
The book, The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, has portrayed how conditions and social norms of the early 1900’s helped shape society through social reform. Sexism, racism, and class, shaped the experiences and choices of the immigrants in The Jungle throughout the book. The huge difference between the classes was the most significant of the three. Sinclair used the story of one immigrant and his family to help show what was going on in society at that time, to raise awareness, and to promote socialism.
“In twentieth-century America the history of poverty begins with most working people living on the edge of destitution, periodically short of food, fuel, clothing, and shelter” (Poverty in 20th Century America). Poverty possesses the ability to completely degrade a person, as well as a family, but it can also make that person and family stronger. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a family of immigrants has to live in severe poverty in Packingtown, a suburb of Chicago. The poverty degrades the family numerous times, and even brings them close to death. Originally the family has each other to fall back on, but eventually members of the family must face numerous struggles on their own, including “hoboing it” and becoming a prostitute. The Jungle, a naturalistic novel by Upton Sinclair, reveals the detrimental effects that a life of poverty exerts on the familial relationships of immigrants in Chicago during the early 1900’s.
Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description
Many impoverished people immigrated to America in hopes of achieving the American Dream but instead were faced with dangerous working conditions while the factory and corporation owners increased their wealth and profit by exploiting this cheap means of labor. Upton Sinclair succeeded to show the nature of the wage slavery occurring in America in the beginning of the twentieth century. People felt distressed and unimportant in the community because they were being used by the wealthy to generate capital leading the industry for the future success and efficacy in the market. Upton Sinclair was an American journalist who incorporated his personal research of the meatpacking industry conditions and people’s life, as well as the structure of the present business into the novel under analysis. Thus, real facts and data were incorporated into this literary work, which helps the audience to feel involved in the work and understand the overall atmosphe...
In the "Gilded Age" immigrants from all over the world became part of America's working nation in hopes of finding a new and better life for themselves and their families. As more and more new families moved to America with high hopes, more and more people fell victims to the organized society, politics, and institutions better described as, the system. The system was like a jungle, implying that only the strong survived and the weak perished. Bosses always picked the biggest and strongest from a throng of people desperate for work, and if you were big and strong, you were more likely to get the job then if you were small and weak. Packing town was also a Jungle in the sense that the people with more authority or political power acted as predators and preyed on the working people, taking their money unfairly because of the their lack of knowledge on the pitfalls of the New World and their inability to speak and understand the universal language adequately. The unjust and corrupt system kept workers from speaking out when they felt they had been wronged and punished them when they did. As a result of the system, men women and even children were overworked, underpaid and taken advantage of. Working immigrants weren't any better off in American then they were in their homeland, as they soon discovered. Dreams that any people had of America were washed away by the corrupt ways of the system.
In the early twentieth century, one after the other, steamboats rolled into the new land shore hauling immigrants by the two thousand, each optimistic about their plans to forge the American Dream. Well into the Industrial Revolution, it was a promising time for production and business, however, only for those in power. The hopeful and tireless could not climb the ladder of opportunity without stepping on top of others to get ahead. Jurgis, the main character of The Jungle, represents this idea as he battles capitalism first failing with hard work and later with corruption. Upton Sinclair, the author, develops the idea that rising up social classes is restricted by individual traits that limit people from changing between the classes. These same defining qualities can be found in our social classes today. Because of these barriers, there
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.
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.