Upton Sinclair, the famous American author, wanted to be a great influence on society. He was born in 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland, from a family of Southern aristocracy. His father was an alcoholic and his mother came from a wealthy family. When Sinclair was ten, the family moved to New York. His father sold hats and spent his evenings in bars coming home drunk every night. As a child, Sinclair was an excellent reader and scholar. By the age of fourteen, he began writing in his spare time. He attended Columbia University and later he moved to Quebec, Canada. There he lived in extreme poverty; not knowing from where his next meal would come. Through poverty, Sinclair came to see the advantages of being a socialist. By the age of twenty he became a dedicated socialist. After all of his struggles through childhood and young adulthood, his writing ended up having the deepest social impact upon the public since Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. This was accomplished through his works such as The Jungle, King Coal, Oil!, and Boston. His work reflects socialistic views and he achieved worldwide recognition extremely easily. He influenced society through the publication of The Jungle, which led to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. He also responded to other people's criticism of his works through letters and articles and wrote numerous influential novels about things that were happening during the time period he lived.
The publication of The Jungle influenced many people. Middle-class readers recognized a direct effect on the meat they consumed. The Jungle had a great influence on family life and the way people thought about what they were eating. After reading the book, adults in families were very skeptic...
... middle of paper ...
...ould find out the facts by reading a newspaper or listening to the radio, but he also knew that he could touch people's hearts through stories and novels. He developed his characters thoroughly and placed them in realistic situations. In The Jungle, the immigrant family of Jurgis showed their enthusiasm for the American dream. They worked hard, spent time together, and were honest; just like the typical American family. As a result, the family became overcome by greed and began spiraling down into a final collapse. The typical American public could relate to the family; because most every family goes through periods of wealth and poverty. Sinclair influenced society through intense character development, real situations, and drama. In return, society called him one of the greatest influences since the Civil War and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The novel follows a family of immigrants from Lithuania working in a meatpacking factory, and as the novel progresses, the reader learns of the revolting conditions within the factories. Sinclair’s The Jungle illustrates the concept of Bitzer’s “Rhetorical Situation” and Emerson’s quote quite effectively. For instance, the horrendous safety and health conditions of the packing factories were the exigencies that Upton Sinclair was making clear to the reader. The rhetorical audience that Sinclair aimed to influence with his novel was Congress and the president, as both had to agree in order to establish health and safety bills to better the conditions within factories. Sinclair’s efforts did not go unnoticed as in 1906 both the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug act were approved by both Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt (Cherny,
However, that was not the case. When The Jungle was presented to the public, readers were astonished by the disgusting and unsanitary state in which the meat was being processed in. The community was more concerned with the meat conditions than they were with the horrific conditions the workers were faced with. So while the popularity of Sinclair’s work was not his original intentions, it still accomplished stages of reform. It can be assumed that Roosevelts initial reluctance to accept Sinclair’s novel was in part, directly connected to his disbelief that the Federal government had become so disconnected and oblivious to American industry and the complete lack of Federal oversight. This “disconnect” did not last long as The Pure Food and Drug Act, as well as, the Meat Inspection Act were both directly set in to place mere months after Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle was published. This type of reform supported progressive philosophy by preventing corporate owners from remaining above government regulation and started a trend in the way government regulators began to deal with corporate monopolies and trusts. The Jungle, along with other “muckrakers” began a series of Federal oversight reforms and regulatory guidance that soon began to take hold in other industries. Big industry would soon realize that they were not above the
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.
These were only some of many examples in The Jungle about deceit and corruption exhibited in the meat packing industry. Nonetheless, plants had government inspectors to check for tubercular animals, but Sinclair explains that these inspectors were usually the kind of people who would be easily distracted by those passing, and would not regret missing dozens of other animals. Therefore, people’s faith in those government inspectors had been betrayed, and their health needs were relentlessly ignored. However, Sinclair’s exposing of the scheming meat packing industry increased the awareness of such practices occurring daily.
The most significant event in the emergence of the twentieth century is the diversity and struggle of society's classes. The novel, The Jungle penned by Upton Sinclair attempts to display the social and economic challenges of the lower class by demonstrating the difficulties of a Lithuanian immigrant family.The predicament situation of Jurgis and his family reveals the dark side of the capitalism, therefore, it also revealed dominance and the exploitation of the bourgeoisie from the proletariat class.Throughout the novel, Jurgis and his family encounter varied difficulties from being unable to find a proper job to several deaths followed one after another due to the harsh life conditions consequently followed by the separation of the family
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
The theme in books by Sinclair Lewis1 relates to the time in which they were written. In both Babbit (1922) and Main Street (1920) Lewis shows us the American culture of the 1920's. He writes about the growing cities, the small towns, the common American man, the strong American need to conform, cultural integration, morals (or lack of in some cases), and he touches upon the women lib movement. All of these and more successfully describe the 1920's.
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.
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.
Taking place in the jungle of meat packing factories during the early 1900s in Chicago, a journalist by the name of Upton Sinclair dissects the savage inner workings of America’s working class factory lifestyle. Sinclair portrayed the grim circumstance that workers faced and the exploited lives of factory workers in Chicago. He became what was then called a mudrucker; a journalist who goes undercover to see first hand the conditions they were investigating. Being in poor fortune, Sinclair was able to blend into the surrounds of the factory life with his poor grimy clothing. The undercover journalist would walk into the factory with the rest of the men, examine its conditions, and record them when he returned home. It is the worker’s conditions
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.
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.
The people who read it were so appalled by the disgusting filth, and the actual ingredients of the processed meat. The book provided the final drive for way for the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act and truth in labeling all passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Also in the story, Sinclair concerns the readers with the abuse of immigrant workers, both men and women. This is partially why he uses the story of the man moving from Lithuania to America.
American literature over the Great Depression was a quite settle time since no one had strong education but more experience. With new ways of government rulings “2 thinkers whose idea had the great impact on the period were the Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and German Karl Marx (1818-1883)” (Bayom 1712) are changing people’s way of thinking. With Communism rising both outside and inside the US and poverty made people start to question society logic on the rich and lower class. Even with all the change from the wars “American Literature…not separated family roots” (Bayom 1713); families were able to stay together but moved on from different ideas and view of life. New ideas of way of life were starting to change literature this time “between the two world wars found itself… attacking the old-style idea of tradition literature” (Bayom 1716). The American people slowly progressed from a straight conservative view to a more liberal view on lifestyle and society. The Great Depression authors were able to change how writers write after authors “writers before World War I had faith in society and in art, writers after between 1914 and 1945 had faith… writers after 1945 had lost even faith and never the faith in themselves that had inspired and sustained writer between the wars.” (Bayom 1713). The change in how writers wrote their books happened because of the depression and which they were forced into poverty and little hope for their future. Harper Lee showed us about how her life was with racism and poverty mixed in with the outcome of sadness and depressing from it. The writers in the 1930s were so influential that “[authors during the Great Depression] remain strong… as teaching of American Literature in college... on the premise that these earlier writers constituted a true American literary traditional worthy of study alongside the British” (Bayom 1713). Big writers