Upton Sinclair, reformer from the womb, was born on September 20, 1878. He became a peculiar rags-to-riches story. Beginning his life in Baltimore, Maryland, His father’s family had a drawn out history of naval involvement and alcoholism. Growing in the south with the destruction of the Civil War, Sinclair’s family was living in poverty for an extended time. His open mind probably came from both perspectives of poor and wealth, because he evolved with his wealthy grandparents in New York at age ten. Sinclair then began writing jokes of ethnics and fiction for a few magazines. Sinclair’s religious background made Jesus Christ his number one hero. At the right age, he was accepted to Columbia University. His first marriage inspired an unhappy novel, Springtime and Harvest. Then many novels came to life after he ended his life of hackery to live one for socialism. He avoided communism of people around him when he joined the Socialist Society in 1905, but only a year earlier Fred Warren, a socialist editor, convinced Sinclair to write about the immigrant hardships of working in the Chicago meat packing houses. …show more content…
Seven weeks after Warren’s request, The Jungle was born.
Many dismissed the request of publishing, and regretted it later. Sinclair eventually published the novel himself in Appeal to Reason. After he received 972 orders, many requested to publish it for him. In 1906, the story sold 150,000 books. The Jungle is Sinclair’s most popular novel that is still printed today for use in classrooms. It has become an important piece of history for the American people to this day. Many critics analyze Sinclair in a positive way without being biased because his work impacted in an extraordinary way. Sinclair wrote over a hundred books, but The Jungle satisfied his critics. He had finally published his name of popularity the right way thanks to this award winning novel. Upton Sinclair owes the main construction of his novel, The Jungle, as socialism, theme, symbolism, and
imagery. In The Jungle Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite are immigrants from Lithuania. They come to Chicago packing town to feast in celebration of their marriage. The couple has brought family members with them to make for a happier existence. The place they’ve come to is intensely dirty and dangerous if you can even find a job. Their wedding reception brings terrible news of debt to the saloon keeper. From this moment on Jurgis promises to work harder to make more money with faith in the American Dream. Jurgis finds work immediately and so do some of his relatives. The house they finally buy is basically a shack that is almost falling to the ground. The family’s lives get more and more expensive and the younger children eventually have to become laborers. All workers experience the same unsafe and back-breaking employment that doesn’t pay very much. The neighborhood of immigrants that Jurgis’ family lives in is tainted with crime and insanity, and his father soon dies from his preceding job. Winter soon takes its toll on Packingtown and the slaughterhouse in which Jurgis works, is unheated and unlit. His family continues to go through many difficult social and physical changes. Jurgis joins a union, and with that he starts to understand how bribery and political poison runs the town he has become a slave too. Jurgis begins to learn English, and Marija, a family member, gets his job back just to lose it for the third time. His wife Ona becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy whom they name Antanas, but she is ordered to go back to work seven days later. Jurgis goes unpaid for three months after spraining his ankle and being forced to lie in bed after spraining his ankle. Soon enough family members die off or run away in agony. Once Jurgis is well, he returns to take his job back, but the factory turns him down. After searching for awhile, he takes a job at the fertilizer plant, which is the most miserable and disgusting place to work in Chicago Packingtown. Jurgis starts to block the pain with an intense amount of alcohol. One night Jurgis’ wife, Ona, comes home from work late. He later finds out her boss, Phil Connor, made her sleep with him. Jurgis fights Phil Connor and is sentenced a month in jail. When he is released, he finds his family evicted from their home and living in a boarding house. When he finds his family, his wife is giving birth. The birth kills Ona. In response to Jurgis disappearing and becoming a drunk, a family member tells him to think of his son. Jurgis finally finds a great job at the stell mill, and replenishes his family’s hope. But soon enough his son drowns in a muddy street. After long agony of roaming the country side, Jurgis spends his work in and out of different businesses, getting injured a couple more times, and in prison once again. He sees family members commit to prostitution and is crushed by their lives in America. One night he finds himself walking into a socialist rally, and Jurgis is inspired by the speaker. He then joins the socialist party, and finds a job as a porter at a socialist hotel. The novel ends with him attending yet another socialist rally and the speaker declares, “Chicago will be ours!” Upton Sinclair’s socialistic power is released when he first creates The Jungle. People go crazy over the conditions their fellow Americans are going through. The novel even opens the eyes to political figures, which makes change inevitable. Upton is very vivid with stories of workers’ lives. In chapter ten of The Jungle, Sinclair says, “Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery.” (“Sinclair, Upton.”) This was one of many passages that grasped sympathy from Sinclair’s audience
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.
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 Jungle, Sinclair deeply understands his subjects and can make the plots real for the reader. Even in a small section of the book, Sinclair makes me feel, imagine and contemplate his words. Chapters 18 through 23, were chapters that Sinclair took time and effort to write and make it to perfection. In my own perspective, I think he achieved this accomplishment and made these chapters a realistic event.
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
Around the same time, journalists started to go undercover to experience first hand just how corrupt the system had become. One of the most influential mudruckers is Upton Sinclair, who went undercover in a meat packing factory and recorded his analysis of the conditions. Built off of the backs of immigrants, it is the very same people that are poorly mistreated but are the reason for the country's booming economy. Yet, a century ago, these migrant workers who devoted their health and time to the factories received a poor man’s salary. They worked long, strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process.
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
From respectable authorities on the subject, and the 1906 Food and Drugs Act itself, gave paticual understanding of the events effecting that time period, a understanding of certain points in the novel “The Jungle”, and how the government went about solving the nation’s going problem, has lead myself to agree that Upton Sinclairs’s
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, emphasizes the importance in changing to become a thriving society through socialism. Sinclair writes his novel to show the corruption that occurs as a result of capitalism. Jurgis’ family is in search for a better life in America where he believes he will make enough pay to support his family. The novel shows that poverty is in control over the working class, but the working class still has a desperation for money. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair pushes for Socialism by showing Jurgis’ struggle to find work, the hardships of the packingtown workers, and the inequality of all men in this capitalistic society.
In the early parts of the 20th century “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair shed some light on the terrifying conditions being held in the meat industry. With the help of Teddy Roosevelt, Strict government laws came into play to regulate the meat packing industry.
In Babbit and Main Street Sinclair Lewis repeataly shows his reactions to the new feeling of the 1920's. These times fueled him into writing his two most well known books in which he shows his fustration of selfish, Capitalistic, mid-western America.
In the late 1800s to the early 1900s people there were people called “Muckrakers”. These were the people that uncovered the ugly truth of things like meatpacking apartments. One of the books written was Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle. Their goals were to uncover a problem to the public then try to eliminate it. In the Progressive Era, muckrakers tried to point out things that no one else knew about. Muckrakers were very influential people during the Progressive Era.
“House of Earth,” by Woody Guthrie and “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair have a powerful view on the United States claim to freedom. Guthrie and Sinclair present different situations because of the time period in which each work was written but the similarities between the characters, conditions and consequences of living in the United States are significant. In these stories, the main characters experience different journeys, but they both endure hope and disappointment that leads them to recognize their dreams, shaped by the stereotype of the American dream, are unreachable because of the restrictions they have. Guthrie and Sinclair use their works to show us that the United States lacks the freedom it claims to have by presenting Tike and
Many impoverished people immigrated to America in hopes of achieving the American Dream but instead were faced with dangerous working conditions while the factory and corporation owners increased their wealth and profit by exploiting this cheap means of labor. Upton Sinclair succeeded to show the nature of the wage slavery occurring in America in the beginning of the twentieth century. People felt distressed and unimportant in the community because they were being used by the wealthy to generate capital leading the industry for the future success and efficacy in the market. Upton Sinclair was an American journalist who incorporated his personal research of the meatpacking industry conditions and people’s life, as well as the structure of the present business into the novel under analysis. Thus, real facts and data were incorporated into this literary work, which helps the audience to feel involved in the work and understand the overall atmosphe...
In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a gruesomely, memorable exposé which he entitled The Jungle. Readers cannot ignore what falls into the sausage vats, the rotting ham that is no longer sold as ham, or the rats. “Sinclair awakened a nation not just to the dangers in the food supply, but to the central role government has to play in keeping it safe” (Cohen). I read The Jungle as a freshman in high school and it took this horrifying book to open my eyes to industrial animal farming and where it stands in America today. While the Food and Drug Act has cleaned up the gory images of humans falling into meat grinders, is the picture any less grim for America, its resources, and its farmed animals?
While Sinclair was writing an important message to the American people he did not simply put the words on a page. He used third person narrative to describe how Jurgis was feeling and what he was experiencing. Sinclair’s tone is sympathetic. He writes in a way that shows that the victims of the industrial age are the poor working class. His worldview is shown to the audience through the eyes of his main character Jurgis and the conflicts with the family members and other people in his life.