Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description …show more content…
His son Nic Sheff had methamphetamine addiction and the memoir explained the stages David went through to help and keep Nic alive. Sheff was trying to appeal to readers who faced a similar crisis. He wanted these readers to be able to connect and relate as much as they could. Everybody can empathize with the basic emotions of relief, depression, and fear. Hence, Sheff utilized pathos in his writing. His poignant tone was testified by phrases such as, “enormously painful” (Sheff 17), “excruciating” (Sheff 35), “fearful”(Sheff 5), and “I relive the hell” (Sheff 54). By representing the pain he felt, he aroused the feelings of regret and agony he assumed his reader would have. His variety of sentence lengths also portrayed his emotions. For example, his long, never-ending sentence reflected his frustration and helplessness. When Nic went missing one night, Sheff said, "it got so bad that I wanted to wipe out and delete and expunge every trace of him from my brain so that I would not have to worry about him anymore and I would not have to to be disappointed by him anymore and hurt by him and I would no longer have the restless and haunting slideshow of images..." (Sheff 241). He also repeated the phrase, “if only I had” (42). This revealed the guilt he had for Nic’s condition. Sheff, along with other countless parents, felt that he was responsible for his son’s
The Jungle, the 1906 exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The novel focuses on an immigrant family and sympathetically and realistically describes their struggles with loan sharks and others who take advantage of their innocence. More importantly, Sinclair graphically describes the brutal working conditions of those who find work in the stockyards. Sinclair's description of the main character's
The most obvious rhetorical device in The Jungle is its powerful imagery. Sinclair offers repulsive anecdotes of work in the packinghouses. His description of the killing beds in winter vividly lingers in the mind of the reader. During winter, Sinclair says, the vicious cold of the beds caused the men to “tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks.” By the end of the day, the frozen blood of slaughtered cattle soaked through their improvised boots so that “a man would be walking on great lumps the size of the feet of an elephant.” Sinclair also claims that when workers fell into the open vats on the floor in “tank rooms full of steam,” their absence passed unnoticed, often “over...
The commercial, “The boy and his dog” is about a young boy who lost his dog and surprisingly finds him. A commercial that can attach the audience, it involves rhetorical devices like pathos and a little ethos. Chevrolet made this commercial and wanted to show the audience something special not like other commercials out there. They showed off a product of course but to catch the attention of people they added a little more than just of a vehicle of theirs. Relatable and honestly amazing commercial of a great relationship that you should never give up on the ones you love and care about no matter what.
The Jungle. One of the most famous muckrakers, Upton Sinclair, published The Jungle in 1906, and it immediately became an international best-seller. Sinclair, who had joined the Socialist party in 1903 originally wrote The Jungle for the socialist magazine, The Appeal to Reason (Constitutional Rights Foundation). He spent time in the Chicago meatpacking district so he could truly see what was going on. What Sinclair witnessed was appalling. He saw sausage that had traveled to and from Europe, poisoned bread and dead rats being put in the hopper that ground the sausage. Instead of smoking the sausage, they preserved the meat with borax and used gelatin to color it (Sinclair 168-169). Although Sinclair wrote The Jungle to show his readers the evils of capitalism, people were more appalled at the disgusting and unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking industry.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
David Sheff narrates; Beautiful Boy, the chronicles his journey to help understand his son substance abuse addiction of methamphetamine. The background of the story shares the brutal and hopeful accounts of a drug addiction. It entails the boundless fears and desperation of a father's reality and experiences of his son's addiction. The irresistible and uncontrollable nature of the urge of his son's addiction leads to a path of self-destructive behavior. David documents his son's short-lived recreational drug use to an on-going spiraling addiction. He commits to helping his son through sobriety in the face of losing his son.
All throughout the true story, Beautiful Boy, David Sheff displays unhealthy addictive tendencies for his son and his son’s addiction to meth. Because of Sheff’s addiction to Nic, he became unable to trust his son, unable to care for himself when he got ill, and made it impossible for himself to enjoy time with his other children because the thought of past memories with Nic haunted him. Although it is normal that parents worry about their children, Sheff went further than many parents would to try and get through to his
Upton Sinclair’s often quoted remark about aiming for the heart and hitting the stomach definitely rings true when reading The Jungle. Most readers mistook it for another muckraking effort, on unsanitary conditions in the packinghouses. If Sinclair had not written the last three of four chapters of the book then it would have read much more like a social protest novel.
In Upton Sinclair's book “The Jungle” he states many points that have big impact in our lives today, some points he declares are how dishonest the society was. The second thing that was mentioned in the book very well is the titles and metaphors. The third thing is “order” which is another way of saying social class of the people. The fourth thing is “cross section” where the plot can be laid out side by side and evaluated as it is. The last point that is said from Sinclair is “i aimed for the public's heart...and i hit the stomach which is a big part in history.
In David Sheff’s book “Beautiful Boy” he utilizes descriptive diction, allusions to other works, and vivid imagery to recreate the experiences he’s gone through during his son’s addiction, times in recovery, and relapses.
Badertscher describes Sinclairs style in his novel The Jungle, “...The book was written in the gritty, realistic style of the period, similar to the novelist such as Theodore Dreiser (“Sister Carrie”) “ (Badertscher, p. 10). This gritty and realistic style is what enabled Sinclair to have such an audience, the realistic descriptions used in his book showed the covered truth as it was. This style is directly what led people to realize how bad much of the industry and which in this period gave voice to the voiceless. The voiceless in which were monopolized in the system and were on the verge of going in to complete poverty. To give a better example of a description his style, Sinclair writes “There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it… These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and , meat would go into the hoppers together” (Sinclair, p. 137). This style is completely descriptive and disgusting which makes the readers stomach turn because this is what really happened in the meat industry. To help better understand the books impact, it helped lead to the “Meat Inspection Act of 1906” and the “Food and Drugs Act of 1906”. These acts would help forever change the way our food is inspected and verified. If Sinclair didn't use his gritty and realistic style, then our meat industry could have been the same as it or much worse than it ever could have
A historical speech by Elie Wiesel in which he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize, and a fictional story that takes place during WWII, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne both describe a peaceful look to conflict. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech scrutinizes the acts of peace and rights activist Elie Wiesel and his motives. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a story during the Holocaust of a boy that is the son of a Nazi that is friends with a Jewish boy. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and many peace activists in history show that the best way to respond to conflict is a peaceful manner.
For this paper, I chose to read and examine Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Written in the height of the muckraking era, The Jungle exposes the terrible conditions of the meatpacking industry and influenced the American public...
Sheff can just let his son drift away, or he can fight to save the boy he loves, the boy he adores. Many times David Sheff believes Nic has hit rock bottom, and many times he thinks this may be the time Nic will stay sober. Nic steals, lies, and fights with his dad and family. Nic has been an addict for nearly a decade. Nic has been on the ground, barely living, barely breathing. Sheff supports and encourages him every step of the way. When Nic is in the hospital after his overdose, Sheff knows he still loves him. He knows that he has to keep fighting for him. Through love, support, and sacrifice, Sheff helps his son rise through his darkest times in the book Beautiful Boy, through brilliant use of literary
The beef industry in, The Jungle exposes and represents the harsh realities of the processing of meat. In Upton Sinclair’s book it states, “That day they had killed four thousand cattle, and these cattle had come in freight trains from far states, and some had got hurt” (66). This exemplifies the importance and significance of a cattle’s life. As workers gathered these animals, it seems as if these creatures aren’t animate nor significant because they arrive at the slaughterhouses injured without caring and nurturing aid. The merciless treatment endless numbers of cows undergo remains unimportant as long as companies and workers earn money, when meat is later sold in stores. “Cattle were driven by men with goads which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were imprisoned, each in a separate pen… leaving no room to turn round” (Sinclair 40). This demonstrates how the livestock is forced and placed in a small setting with no option but to stay still. Being electrocuted is insensitive and nauseating because it expresses the lack of compassion the industry has towards these innocent animals. The way cattle are handled by men elucidates the suffering they have to endure. In addition to the beef industry, the lives of chickens today in the modern day chicken industry are harsh and dreadful