The Literary Use Of Dialect In 'The Jungle'

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The Jungle is a complex book; there are many different literary aspects used to help further the book. The ones that have the biggest impact on the book are dialect, mood, theme, and foreshadowing. These literary devices are used multiple times throughout the book to help the reader better understand the story, and to better understand the characters and what they are going through. Dialect is used multiple times in the book. Dialect is the way characters speak compared to others. Jurgis and his family barely speak any english at all, so when they do it is mostly broken english in very short sentences. Their lack of ability to speak english hurts them many times in the book, and is a recurring issue for them. One instance of this is when they However, they can barely speak english, let alone read it, so they have to get someone to read the deed for them to make sure everything checks out and that they aren’t being conned. Since they didn’t actually read it though, they didn’t know exactly what the deed said. On page 54 they find out they have additional costs, “That means… that you have to pay them seven dollars next month, as well as the twelve dollars.” (Page 54 the Jungle.) Seven dollars doesn’t sound like much to us now, but back then that was quite a bit of money, especially on top of the twelve dollars they already had to pay. If they could have read english, they would have known about that from the start, and they would have had more time to plan for that seven dollar expense, rather than having it flung upon them. Their lack of english skills also makes it very hard for them to communicate with anyone in general. When they are looking for work, they can’t even fully express that they’re It’s something you hear about all the time, how people want to come to America for a better start, a fresh start, a chance to get rich and make it big. However, this book is showing that it’s not really as ideal as everyone thinks it is. The evils of big business, and the corruption that runs rampant is also a major theme in this book. There are multiple occassions when they shed light on what the packing companies were doing, and how it was harming everyone, not even just the workers. They would pay off government inspectors so they could sell meat full of cholera and e. coli, they would use even the most undesirable disgusting bits of the cows and hogs and can it and pass it off as food. There is one quote from the book that I think is a perfect explanation of this from page 119, “They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.” They would work their employees to near death so that they could get the highest possible turn out, for the least amount of money possible. This theme is present throughout the entire book, it really is the driving factor behind everything

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