Upton Sinclair’s story, The Jungle, represents the American dream to have a rich, successful life and the downfalls American people faced with business corruption. Sinclair used a naturalistic view to expose these downfalls in American life and industry. Naturalism was a literary movement during the 1880’s to the 1930’s that emphasized detailed realism. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels. Writers applied Social Darwinism into their works. Emerging in the United States around 1870, the theory applied biological ideas of survival of the fittest and natural selection to society and politics. It suggests that people were victims of poor social conditions, economics, heredity, and environments …show more content…
Europeans were flooding into the United States in search of the American dream, the dream of a better, simpler life with easier riches. Unfortunately, these new comers were bound to a life of hard labor, dangerous jobs, and insufficient salaries. These immigrants lived in overcrowded, run-down tenement houses that had no clean water or proper sewage, offering a cheap source of labor. Sinclair’s story emphasizes the life of a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis, who moves to American in search for a better life for him and his family. When he arrives, he finds a job in the meatpacking industry, run by uncaring, corrupt businessmen. Being paid a very minimum amount of money, the family finds itself in a life of …show more content…
Here, the population was booming, cities were growing, and factories expanding. Along with all the growth came the horrors. Overcrowding in cities led to unsanitary tenement houses, uncleanliness lead to disease, and livelihoods turned into corruption. Sinclair portrays Jurgis as a man engaged in a brutal struggle. Jurgis must survive the “lawless jungle” where only the most fit succeed. Jurgis is treated like a slave, someone that could easily be replaced, run by the brutal slave driver, his boss. When he falls ill, seen as unfit to continue working, he loses his job forcing him to live a life of a hobo. His environment forced him to become a conman to
His ego was heighten when he found a job during his first day in Packingtown. (Sinclair, “The Jungle”, 23)*. Excited as he was, Jurgis had no knowledge of the work he was going to get involved with. The meat industry at Durham’s are not a pleasant sight, and Jurgis was shocked with the production of the meat industry. His time working there allows him to view the process of meat packaging and distribution; though he can’t understand the error towards the industry’s method of employment and production. The superintendents and higher officials have no interest in the well-being of there employees, and view them as replaceable objects. If an employee was not long fit work; or refused to comply with their regulations: such as “speed up” demands or longer hours, they would immediately get replaced with another person willing to obey. In additions, accidents (though not as frequent) arose having workers injured, or in dreadful occasions, killed. Therefore, these accidents became a valid reason to replace workers without owning up to any ethical consequences. Jurgis was also recruited to work on confidential assignments, such as process and distribution of tainted meat (Sinclair, “The Jungle”, #)*. This allowed Jurgis to witness the corrupt version of an industry. Tainted meat was washed and recruits removed as much spoiled meat as possible. After this task, the recruits
The main theme of these 6 chapters is "The lie of the American Dream". Jurgis thought by coming here to the United States, he would find everything easy, but everything turned against his wishes. In chapter 18, he's out of jail, free, only to find someone else in his home. He realized that his family had lost their home because of lack of money, and because he wasn't there when they needed him the most. Later finding them and finding his wife giving birth with complications and smelling death around him. Is a very shocking and yet horrifying idea.
Sinclair's novel is meant to entirely reject the capitalist system and to bring in its place a socialist system. In this novel, capitalism and its exploitation of the immigrants and other workers, are in fact shown to be tools of the capitalist bosses, used as another means to control and mislead them. In Sinclair's novel the broken dreams of Jurgis Rudkis and his fellow Lithuanian immigrants, unions are meant to be institutions which give false hope to the workers. They live in utterly dreadful circumstances and are exploited like animals by their capitalist bosses. The women are forced to work at an inhuman pace, lose money if they cannot, and then fired if the complain. (106). And the men in the packinghouses like slaves in hell. When Jurgis is lucky enough to be picked for work, he finds working conditions to hardly fitting of the American Dream for which he left his native Lithuania. Sinclair is relentless in providing page after page of detailed horrors the immigrants faced everyday at work, "there were the beef luggers who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerators cars, a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years.......of..... al those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb (101).
A major theme of The Jungle is socialism as a remedy for the evils of capitalism. Every event that takes place in the novel is designed to show a particular failure of capitalism. Sinclair attempts to show that capitalism is a "system of chattel slavery" and the working class is subject to "the whim of en every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers"(Sinclair 126). Sinclair portrays this view through Jurgis, a hardworking Lithuanian immigrant and his family. Sinclair uses the hardships faced by this family to demonstrate the effect of capitalism on working people as a whole. Jurgis' philosophy of "I will work harder" is shown not to work in this system. No matter how hard Jurgis worked, he and his family were still stuck in the same squalor. These characters did not overcome the odds and succeed. That would defeat the purpose of the novel; to depict capitalism as an economic and social system that ignores the plight of the working class and only cares for the wealthy, as well as furthering his socialist agenda.
To be concise, Jurgis and his family faced various challenges in America. As a result, their lives changed, for better or for worse. They were inexperienced, and therefore made many mistakes, which made their life in Chicago very worrisome. However, their ideology and strong belief in determination and hard work kept them alive. In a land swarming with predators, this family of delicate prey found their place and made the best of it, despite the fact that America, a somewhat disarranged and hazardous jungle, was not the wholesome promise-land they had predicted it to be.
The novel is an exposé of the harsh and vicious reality of the American Dream'. George and Lennie are poor homeless migrant workers doomed to a life of wandering and toil. They will be abused and exploited; they are in fact a model for all the marginalized poor of the world. Injustice has become so much of their world that they rarely mention it. It is part of their psyche. They do not expect to be treated any different no matter where they go.
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.
...ous struggles of Jurgis and his family. Not only does the family suffer from poverty, but they also suffer from a poor knowledge of English, the glares of the townspeople, and the damaging effects of hard manual labor. The family gets harmed by the bosses in Packingtown as well, they receive unfair wages for long days at work. They also get deceived by the housing agent, forcing them to pay much more money for the house as a result of insurance, an expense they were not prepared for. As a result of the hard manual labor and his name being put on the blacklist, Jurgis resorts to “hoboing it” just to survive towards the end of the novel. The poverty tears the family apart: they end up splitting up towards the end of the novel, all going separate ways. Poverty negatively impacted the familial relationships of thousands of immigrants in Chicago in the early 1900s.
... a liveliness and spirit that appeals to many readers, Sinclair's historical novels are more pleasurable reading” (McEwen). Reviewers have criticized the conclusion of The Jungle, where the main character is inspired by the principles of socialism, as being too simplistic, edifying, and not convincing ("Explanation of: 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair”). “Despite these criticisms, The Jungle, with its harsh portrait of the American dream as unattainable to the working-class poor, is considered an important work in the tradition of the social novel” ("Explanation of: 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair”). It is very likely, that Sinclair be remembered mostly because of The Jungle, but his other works will also catch the attention of those who wish to be informed about social issues and significant events in modern history in a simple and clarified fashion (McEwen).
In the book, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair portrays a Lithuanian immigrant family traveling to America in hopes to pursue the American dream. The American Dream is the ideology that every person in America should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and taking initiative. Jurgis and his family were very optimistic on their quest to seek the fortunes that America claims to be able to provide. However, Jurgis Rudkus goes through many obstacles that take a toll in his life only to find out that the American dream is nothing but an overrated fantasy that is virtually impossible.
The Jungle in regards to highlighting the gender presence in the novel. Derrick considers that the “figure of the author and the structure of authoring are crucial to an understanding of the operation of gender” (85). Upton Sinclair exposes the inconsistencies and contradictions of gender roles during the late nineteenth-century. The development of Sinclair as a writer has been influenced by literary works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin that contribute to
The Jungle vents the often overlooked trials and baffling tribulations of Lithuanian newcomers. Upton Sinclair, a well known political activist for the Socialist party writes this story as a glance into the events happening during his life-span. At the time of The Jungle's publication, Sinclair was twenty-eight years old, and he used the profits from his book to run for Congress. During this time, many things were happening in America: the Industrial Age was at its peak; child labor was running rampant; immigration through Ellis Island boomed; and the Communist witch hunt began. These time-markers are viewed through the lens of the setting, the industrialized city of Chicago. The summary of The Jungle is one of a depressed and deceived Lithuanian man. Overall, The Jungle is a book which reflects the frenzied fight for survival in a new land. The Lithuanian people, along with many others, had come to America under the presupposition of a better life. Instead of finding happiness, freedom, and glorious wealth, they found disease, injustice, and meaningless
In the world of economic competition that we live in today, many thrive and many are left to dig through trashcans. It has been a constant struggle throughout the modern history of society. One widely prescribed example of this struggle is Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel, The Jungle. The Jungle takes the reader along on a journey with a group of recent Lithuanian immigrants to America. As well as a physical journey, this is a journey into a new world for them. They have come to America, where in the early twentieth century it was said that any man willing to work an honest day would make a living and could support his family. It is an ideal that all Americans are familiar with- one of the foundations that got American society where it is today. However, while telling this story, Upton Sinclair engages the reader in a symbolic and metaphorical war against capitalism. Sinclair's contempt for capitalist society is present throughout the novel, from cover to cover, personified in the eagerness of Jurgis to work, the constant struggle for survival of the workers of Packingtown, the corruption of "the man" at all levels of society, and in many other ways.
Literature, throughout history, has brought people together by inciting human emotions and portraying ideas felt across cultures. In the latter half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the predominant culture in Europe was that of industrialism and the explosion of human knowledge and development. The revolutionary scientific discoveries of prominent biologists such as Charles Darwin caused a rift in the culture of the time period, challenging people to look at life in a completely new way. Beginning in the 1870s, many European authors began to write stories based on the emerging idea that one’s life circumstances result from an uncontrollable genetic predisposition (Lehan 3). This movement came to be known as naturalism and spread to America by the turn of the century, influencing authors like Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, and Émile Zola (Matterson). Literary naturalism, the movement that falls between realism and modernism in the evolution of literature, was a rather pessimistic literary movement which aimed to apply Darwinian principles to its characters and plot lines, study the human’s place in nature, and conclude that all fortune and misfortune in life is simply the result of heredity, instinct, and passion.
During a few decades, American society had been through different significant changes such as the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and Scientific Development. These changes had given a massive influence to the American literary movement in the nineteenth century. In fact, some of the literary works at that time are a reflection of those changes. One remarkable intellectual trend, which emerged in America in the nineteenth century and which subsequently became a literary movement is Naturalism (Kendir). In this case, Scientific Development is a major factor that influences the movement of literary naturalism. Charles Darwin is the one who brought up a new concept of sciences, in which Stephen Crane will use it as a concept for his short story “The Open Boat”. From Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species,” there are two concepts that can be found in “The Open Boat.” The first concept is natural selection, which means only individuals with certain advantageous characteristic will remain survived (Padian, 2009). Apparently, Crane used this Darwin’s idea as a foundation of the story for his short story “The Open Boat.” Then, the next concept is survival of the fittest which means nature only selected the fittest individuals that can adapt to any changes. In “The Open Boat,” Crane explicitly tells the readers the effort from the four men and their struggle for existence. In brief, the influence of Darwinism had played a pivotal role in literary movement by inserting a new philosophy and idea of life based upon science, in which this idea is used by Stephen Crane for his short story “The Open Boat.”