In conclusion, The Jungle offered a detailed insight to the working conditions and highly unsanitary processing methods in the meat packing industry. Although he failed to successfully promote Socialism, the book has been widely successful, mainly for the horrid descriptions and images of working in the plant. It will continue to be a memorable novel for history enthusiasts alike, and a captivating story to portray life of a working class citizen during the Progressive Era.
He chose to represent the industrial world through the meatpacking industry, where the rewards of progress were enjoyed only by the privileged, who exploited the powerless masses of workers. The Jungle is a novel and a work of investigative journalism; its primary purpose was to inform the general public about the dehumanization of American workers. However the novel was much more effective at exposing the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking industry. The public’s concern about the meat supply was so great that Sinclair later commented, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” He played the journalist role well, actually spending seven months in Chicago where he studied the inner workings of the meatpacking industry. The experience allowed him to describe first-hand the sickening environment of the modern industrial factory.
The Jungle has many strong points that tell how things were for most immigrants during this time period. Many fled to America in hopes of the talks of being free from oppression and to be able to maintain a strong job and become successful, but very few ever realized it. The sanitation and working conditions in the plants were so coarse that it literally put the country in a shock to discover what was really going on. The book was extremely influential in making an impact on the regulation of all the food industries and making sure the food sold in stores is healthy and up to certain standards. It also helped raise agendas about how terrible the conditions in the plants were, which helped strengthen the unions of the time to better fight against the robber barons of the time.
A man called Ostrinski is a half-blind tailor who teaches Jurgis about Socialism. There are also the members of Ona’s family, each of whom play minor roles in the story. The story opens with the feast at Jurgis and Ona’s wedding in America, but soon flashes back to the time before they left Lithuania. Jurgis met Ona at a horse fair, and fell in love with her. Unfortunately, they were too poor to have a wedding, since Ona’s father just died.
This eventually resulted in new federal food laws that would maintain the sanitation of canned meat. Yet this reaction was all to Sinclair’s dismay. The public forced action towards the sanitation of the industry but ignored the conditions of the meat industry workers, which is what Sinclair had originally written the book for. Nonetheless, his work did promote the national well being of the nation. Because of the publication of The Jungle, processed and fast food industries are now regularly monitored and inspected for sanitation.
Many progressives were journalists who wrote essays, books and articles that exposed the injustices and corruption who were called “muckrakers”. These muckrakers gained were published in magazines such as McClure’s and Collier’s, which is how many of them, gained fame. One of the most well known muckrakers is Ida Tarbell who wrote The History Of Standard Oil Company in 1904 which discussed the harsh tactics of John D. Rockefeller in order to become the only vendor of oil. Frank Norris also wrote about the monopoly of railroads in Octopus. These monopolies affected small businesses since they didn’t stand a chance against the giant industries, which is how monopolies eliminated the competition.
His next door neighbor is Jay Gatsby, and his distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, lives across the bay with her husband, Tom. Nick plays an important role in the main plot of the novel, for he is responsible for reuniting Gatsby and Daisy. Jay Gatsby Jay Gatsby is one of the most interesting and memorable characters in this novel. Born as James Gatz to poor farmers in North Dakota, he decided at an early age that he wanted more out of life than North Dakota could offer. Gatsby comes to the East Coast after the war and makes a fortune in bootlegging and other questionable business activities due to the help of characters such as Meyer Wolfsheim.
Frank Abagnale Jr. doesn’t have it so bad, as instead of serving his sentence behind bars, he works with the man who caught him. To this day he helps find over 80% of the fraudulent checks being passed through the system. George Jung is in jail and is coming out in the near future. All in all, both characters have made large impacts on the American Society, as they are famous for their devious actions. These men both grew up in poor areas where their family constantly had struggles, and instead of getting passed it, both tell themselves never to be like that again.
There is a bibliography in the back which lists all of his sources for information on meatpacking and his other documentation. For the most part it is historically accurate, as it tells the life of a man who works in a realistic meat packing setting. Because it is fictional, though, it probably would not be much of an aid to a historical researcher. The novel itself, containing over Three hundred pages, is rather long and tediously boring. Sinclair’s central purpose in writing The Jungle was to persuade people to join the socialist party and to adopt the view that socialism is the only way to conquer the capitalistic empires that abuse the working class.
Throughout the novel Jurgis’s immigrant family is slowly torn apart due to the bias economic and social system that America has. However, when Jurgis discovers socialist politics in Chapter 28, it clearly shows that the purpose of this novel is to show the harsh reality between the socialism and capitalism. This quote “To Jurgis the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust” (Sinclair, pg. 384) has a dramatic impact on me because it made me realize the true differences between the two theories. Capitalism supports the rich and the wealthy continue to increases their riches ... ... middle of paper ... ...absolutely believe that Sinclair’s messages are of major importance because the validity of his messages still applies to anyone living in the 21st century.