Similarities Between The Jungle And The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle both portray drastically different social aspects of the early 1900s in America. Together, they both expose the unfavorable aspects of the new, modern society, that is not often portrayed in history. Although both The Jungle and The Great Gatsby are pieces of fiction, they portray an accurate depiction of the physical and the moral challenges people experienced during the growing industrialization in America. However, The Jungle's plot involved more factual evidence and the environment is a more accurate representation of the time period, whereas The Great Gatsby portrayed a slightly less realistic representation of that era.
The plot in both stories are thought-provoking

and eye-opening. The plot behind The Jungle, however, is more realistic than that of The Great Gatsby. According to The Jungle, unhealthy, diseased meat; people buying votes; blacklisting practices; “speed-up gangs”; and many other moral discrepancies were all common practices in Chicago meatpacking plants. Upton Sinclair experienced this first hand when he worked alongside immigrants in the meat packing plants. His experience in the area builds credibility for all of his arguments and the claims that he made.
The desires of the characters in the novels are radically different as well. In The Jungle, the main concern of the characters is to hold employment and maintain survival - fun is an absolute luxury. Jobs are at the main focus of everything. They are strongly desired, for lack of one means starvation and likely death. They are the source of great hardship, though. For the characters of The Jungle, life revolves around employment.
Contrastly, in The Great Gatsby, work is never the central focus and is only mentioned in minor conversations. For these characters, life was for the wealthy to have fun and party. People lived for pleasure, but the privilege of having pleasure was earned through a day of labor. The Great Gatsby focuses on the luxuries of the period at the expense of other aspects of life. Furthermore, the pleasures experienced by Nick in the novel are not the same as the rest of the population - they are only available to the occupants of the East and the West Egg.
While the characters of The Great Gatsby reflected the social expectations of the time period, the relationships between them and the situations grow progressively less accurate or unlikely as the story unfolds. The novel clearly demonstrates the divide between old money and new money in the period. The Great Gatsby placed little significance on practical matters and more on love affairs and luxury. Additionally, the connections between all of the characters go from realistic to surreal by the end of the novel. Gatsby's love for Daisy is eventually revealed to Tom, who is then enraged, despite his affair with Myrtle. Myrtle's death and Mr. Wilson's revenge are wild outcomes to a series of events that would otherwise be understandable.
Although opposed in so many other aspects, the books are in surprising unison concerning the ethics of the time.

In The Jungle, Jurgis is worn down by systematic exploitation, forcing him to abandon his morals and obligations. Submission to the process is his only hope of survival for himself and his family. However grim the book is, the reality supports the terrors exposed in The Jungle. Despite the era of “progress,” the culture only brought harm to their life. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy is a “perfect woman” in the lap of luxury. But she is also pulled down by the negative influences of the new society. She is shallow, and is unconsciously careless with others, knowing that she is protected by her wealth. This behavior is encouraged and reinforced in their upper-class world on East Egg. They indirectly made their money though the work of thousands of other less fortunate, such as Jurgis and his family. They live in a world cordoned off by classes. It is a time of capitalism and pleasure, of expansion and exploitation, and under the surface of it all there is a negative undercurrent that affects both the affluent and the beggars. Both books are in unison and explain with piercing foresight how corruption lurks in everyone's lives. Both books illustrate the evils created by industrialization and

capitalism.
The creations of Upton Sinclair and F. Scott Fitzgerald are both true to life in the early 1900s. Although at first glance they appear to be written about times eons apart, they are both representative of the fragmented society at the time. The Great Gatsby expounds on the life of the very wealthiest handful of individuals. The characters are greatly representative to the population of East and West Egg, but the ensuing chaos carries the book beyond its accurate beginnings. Ultimately, The Jungle is a more fact-driven book firmly grounded in history. It shows life at its most bare, without any flourishes. The evils it found lurking were more terrible than any the author could ever invent, and it exposed them to the world for all to see.