Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The city lifestyle essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The city lifestyle essay
The concrete jungle where dreams are made of; there’s nothing a person can’t accomplish. Living life as a traveler is more desirable than settling down in a big city or a small town because of the endless amount of opportunities and the exciting vibe. The previous statement is connected to the topic of the essay through the similarity of travelling and opportunity. The main characters of the story enjoy travelling and seeking out danger. John Sandford writes the novel, “Gathering Prey”, to be set in the modern day. Sandford repeats certain details in different events throughout the story, therefore giving the story its investigative genre. The author uses numerous literary devices to show how the characters face many challenges and difficulties.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is about a Lithuanian family living in Chicago in the 1900’s. They had faith in the American dream, hoping to start a new and successful life. Unfortunately they were deprived of they hopes and dreams. They were placed in the middle of a society where only the strongest and richest survived. The rich keep getting richer and the poor get even poorer. Jurgis and his family went to extreme lengths just in hopes of finding a job, they were forced to travel in heavy rain, strong winds, and thick snow, even when they were sick, in fear of losing their jobs. The Jungle pointed out many flaws in society such as filthy meat and sickening work conditions.
Ultimate freedom is an odyssey everyone, at least once in their lifetime, tries to conquer. Chris McCandless did everything in his power to try and capture that freedom he was searching for. He ultimately gave up his own life during that quest. Did he find what he was searching for? We may never know. Very many people have diverse opinions on this character. Chris McCandless was not selfish. He was a young, well-educated boy. His parents handed him everything on a silver platter; he wanted to prove not only to himself but to everyone else he could do things on his own. His possessions did not define who he was as a person. He thought towards everyone else he was just another brick in the wall, a pretty rich boy, and that did not “fly” with him. He had to prove his worth.
Five years ago you could have found me hiding under my covers, praying to a god that I no longer believe in with my eyes shut tightly—but not anymore. These nights I offer up a two minute thanksgiving for the sake of karma; I look out into the darkness and I recognize the shadows as objects in my house rather than the faces of my dead grandfathers. It feels good to open my eyes, but I’ve traded in that old ignorant twinkle for a steady calmness. I still duck and cover when an insect the size of my pupil is within five feet of me, but from a distance I know that I am not so different from the tiny creature. If I am a predator, I am not the kind of predator who hunts but rather the one who kills out of fear. I prefer the role of the prey— it suits me well. I avoid conflict: I prefer spending time at home with my wife, I weigh less than 100lbs, and I have been notorious for becoming paralyzed with laughter upon being attacked by testosterone-laden family members. If a human or other animal my size or larger were to want me for dinner, I would be an easy target though my meat wouldn’t feed a family of four.
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 by Upton Sinclair, depicts the life of Jurgis Rudkus. He is an immigrant from Lithuania who travels to Chicago with Ona - his soon to be wife - and both their families. They see America as a new start and a new opportunity. They soon find out that in a country built on capitalism there isn't much freedom for the working class and the family is thrown into poverty with little hope of escaping. Poverty and capitalism are two themes that are still very destructive in our society today.
Sinclair, has shown in a dramatic style the hardships and obstacles which Jurgis and fellow workers had to endure. He made the workers sound so helpless and the conditions so gruesome, that the reader almost wants a way out for Jurgis. Sinclair's The Jungle is a "subliminal" form of propaganda for
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.
American consumers think of voting as something to be done in a booth when election season comes around. In fact, voting happens with every swipe of a credit card in a supermarket, and with every drive-through window order. Every bite taken in the United States has repercussions that are socially, politically, economically, and morally based. How food is produced and where it comes from is so much more complicated than the picture of the pastured cow on the packaging seen when placing a vote. So what happens when parents are forced to make a vote for their children each and every meal? This is the dilemma that Jonathan Safran Foer is faced with, and what prompted his novel, Eating Animals. Perhaps one of the core issues explored is the American factory farm. Although it is said that factory farms are the best way to produce a large amount of food at an affordable price, I agree with Foer that government subsidized factory farms use taxpayer dollars to exploit animals to feed citizens meat produced in a way that is unsustainable, unhealthy, immoral, and wasteful. Foer also argues for vegetarianism and decreased meat consumption overall, however based on the facts it seems more logical to take baby steps such as encouraging people to buy locally grown or at least family farmed meat, rather than from the big dogs. This will encourage the government to reevaluate the way meat is produced. People eat animals, but they should do so responsibly for their own benefit.
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.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair exemplifies a muckraking style in its often gory depictions of life in a meat packing factory, Sinclair writes of how the meat packing industry exploits its workers, many of whom are uneducated and poor in the same way a capitalist government exploits it's working class. Sinclair uses Symbolism in terms of physical objects, Objects that serve a metaphorical purpose, and oppressive tone, to persuade the reader that Capitalism leads to the declination and corruption of America and that the only way to remedy this is socialistic government.
In the early twentieth century, one after the other, steamboats rolled into the new land shore hauling immigrants by the two thousand, each optimistic about their plans to forge the American Dream. Well into the Industrial Revolution, it was a promising time for production and business, however, only for those in power. The hopeful and tireless could not climb the ladder of opportunity without stepping on top of others to get ahead. Jurgis, the main character of The Jungle, represents this idea as he battles capitalism first failing with hard work and later with corruption. Upton Sinclair, the author, develops the idea that rising up social classes is restricted by individual traits that limit people from changing between the classes. These same defining qualities can be found in our social classes today. Because of these barriers, there
In the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author talks about, not only vegetarianism, but reveals to us what actually occurs in the factory farming system. The issue circulating in this book is whether to eat meat or not to eat meat. Foer, however, never tries to convert his reader to become vegetarians but rather to inform them with information so they can respond with better judgment. Eating meat has been a thing that majority of us engage in without question. Which is why among other reasons Foer feels compelled to share his findings about where our meat come from. Throughout the book, he gives vivid accounts of the dreadful conditions factory farmed animals endure on a daily basis. For this reason Foer urges us to take a stand against factory farming, and if we must eat meat then we must adapt humane agricultural methods for meat production.
Imagine moving to an unfamiliar place, speaking little to none of the native language, and being under immense pressure to not only care for and afford a nicer life for yourself but also your spouse and others. In “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, readers get a look into the struggles the main character, Jurgis Rudkus must face and overcome in a new bustling environment. Throughout the story Jurgis begins to realize the difficulties that come with the American dream and the sacrifices he must make in order to make it in America. Through the exploitation of laborers, filthy work conditions and the prejudice and unjust economic and social system Jurgis comes to realize nothing comes easy in America.
The book I read was titled Prey. It was written by Michael Crichton, who has written many other knowledgeable books. This book is all based around the idea of human curiosity and carelessness. The book has an insert where Michael talks about how these concerns addressed in the book are concerns in real life. The book talks about how nanoparticles accidently let into the air caused some unexpected and deadly consequences. The topic of the book affects me because it gave me some insight on what it was like to deal with situations like that. Also, I hope it allows everyone who reads it to see that we need to be more careful and think of long term results instead of just short term fixes.
The initial responses to the Green Hills of Africa fall into three categories: poor, indifferent, and promising. Starting with the poor reviews, always Hemingway’s favorites, John Chamberlain of the New York Times calls the novel “simply an overextended book about hunting”, not the “profound philosophical experience” that the foreword proposes it is. Further, it is “not one of Hemingway’s major works.”2 Newsweek says, “He said he wanted to write a novel and earn enough money to go back to Africa to "learn more about lions" and that is all he did.”3 Perhaps the most biting criticism comes from Edmund Wilson: