The Jungle and Plunkitt of Tammay Hall

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In the books, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Plunkitt of Tammay Hall, they both focus on how life was like in America during 1905. But they show it in different perspectives. In the book The Jungle, the characters in it are attempting to live the American Dream after migrating from Lithuania to The United States. And in the Plunkitt of Tammay Hall, it is about a sentor named Geroge Washington Plunkitt, who shares his secrets on how to be the best Politican. Throughout both books, they both focus on many of the same issues, yet view them different. The three reoccuring themes I saw in bth books were, government corruption, social class conflicts, and Urbanization. Through out this paper, I will be analyzing the differences between the two books and these three themes. To start off, I will be talking about government coruption. In both books, they discuss government corruption but in two different ways. In the book the Jungle, the characters struggle living the American Dream because capitalism kept bringing them down. When Jurgis, his wife Ona and their family, left Lithuania, they set out with high hopes on making it big in the city of chicago. Little did they know that they would be in a worldwind of trouble due to capitalism. As they got to Chicago, the had little to no money but big dreams of making it big. They first encounter capitalsim when they attempted to buy a house from an agent. Little did they know that the agent pulled a fast one on the family and not only did the agent not sell them the house, he rented them the house and added intreset fees to the money they had to pay every month. Another example of Captialism is when Jurgis discovered that his wife Ona was being raped by Mr. Connor, her boss. Once he found out about the rape, Jurgis, only seeing red, ran of and attempted to kill Mr. Connor. Jurgis was arrested and sent to jail. Once he got out, he was Mr. Connor blacklisted Jurgis from Packingtown and the stockyard, making it so nobody would hire Jurgis, no matter how good he was at the job. In Plunkitt of Tammay, george starts off by talking about how a lot of people think that if you have a college degree, youre automatically the ideal candiate for being in politics and a good suit.

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