The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, is a story about an immigrant that is trying to live the American Dream. The story follows Jurgis, a man from Lithuania who moves to Chicago to pursue a better life and to reach the “American Dream”. Unfortunately, Jurgis encounters multiple problems throughout his pursue such as jail time and death in the family to name a few. In the end, he doesn’t really get to live his “American Dream”, so he tries to improve it for others by joining a social reform to protest the problems with capitalism. The time that this story is taken place in is the early 20th century, where some working environments were harsh and the employees were taken advantage of. I believe Sinclair’s thesis for the novel was that the working …show more content…
class will always suffer unless radical changes happens to every class. This book was published in 1906, which is around the same time when many people were taken advantage of in the workforce and labor unions were formed to fix that constant problem. Sinclair’s thesis in the novel was that the working class will always be treated unfair unless radical changes are made.
This is shown throughout the novel and is shown in the eyes of Jurgis, an immigrant from Lithuania. When Jurgis and his family found a house to live in, everyone is forced to find a job in Chicago. The problem with this is that, the jobs in the town require tons of labor and some of the jobs were unsafe for people. Jurgis finds a job at a slaughterhouse, but he comes to see that he is working in a dangerous time of the year and that the working conditions are terrible. This is the starting base where reform is needed but Jurgis was oblivious to what he was encountering at first. He would risk his life every time he would go to work. Sinclair starts to point out that immigrants have to struggle and they cannot really live comfortably in that time period. He exclaimed that from the moment that the family bought the house that had a whole bunch of loop holes and it slowly progressed into Jurgis’ …show more content…
workplace. Jurgis eventually saw the corruption of the slaughterhouse and joined a union and sees that it wasn’t just the slaughterhouse that was corrupt, it is all of the town that is corrupt. Even though Jurgis sees what is going on, he is still upbeat about what he can do and continues to work for the slaughterhouse until he gets hurt and sprains his ankle. Since there wasn’t any workers compensation at that time, Jurgis wasn’t paid while he was recovering from his injury. Sinclair was trying to make a point with this part of the novel. He was showing at this point that these rules implemented are not fair towards the working class and that some kind of workers compensation needs to be implemented to help out people. People would risk injury every day in these types of factories and if they get hurt, companies will not pay them when they get injured from work or they will just terminate their working status. Later on in the novel, Jurgis is arrested for fighting his wife’s boss, Phil Connor, and was held in prison for a month.
After leaving prison, Jurgis found out that his family has been evicted from the house they bought. Jurgis’ family relied on him for a decent income and once that was gone everything was taken away. Sinclair shows that one setback can ruin everything for an entire family. He also shows that most immigrants have to live on a check to check basis to keep what they own. Jurgis then has to find a new job and he does over time; his occupation is to dig up space for freight tunnels. He hurts himself again at work and loses his job again. This part of the novel shows that, these kind of jobs are a high risk/ low reward, and Sinclair makes it clear after Jurgis gets hurt in both of his jobs. After losing both jobs, Jurgis resorts to begging people for money because of his situation. He left his family, he didn’t have a home and he was jobless. If there were better rules applied for immigrants and workers in general, then maybe Jurgis wouldn’t have gone through all the trauma through his stay in Chicago. Towards the end, Jurgis was sent to jail again for fighting Phil Connor again and once he is released he finally sees the true image of the “American Dream” through a socialist party. Jurgis sees that the only way to change the Capitalistic view, is for the workers to also own some factories to compete with wealthy business owners. He sees that capitalism is biased
towards wealthy people and the only way to change it is to make a stand. After reading this novel, I can see where Sinclair Upton was directing the message to and at that time, his message was heard through the book. Radical changes needed to happen for the working class to improve and to encourage people to join the workforce. I feel like the book was well written and Upton got his point across. Even though the book was good, I did not like some of the actions that Jurgis did. One good example of that was when he fought Phil Connor again. He already fought him and got arrested for that and that ruined his relationship with his family so why did he have to fight him again. Another critique of the book was that the characters were hard to relate to; granted that this was set in different eras the characters were somewhat hard to relate to. The novel also seemed a little one side. There wasn’t a point of view from the wealthy man’s perspective on immigrants and how their factories are ran. Overall, I think that Sinclair Upton got his point across in the novel and his points were valid when it comes to the working class needing a change for the better.
The period of time running from the 1890’s through the early 1930’s is often referred to as the “Progressive Era.” It was a time where names such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller stood for the progress of America and their great contributions to American industry and innovation. This chapter however, has a much darker side. Deplorable working conditions, rampant political corruption and power hungry monopolies and trusts threatened the working class of America and the steady influx of European immigrants hoping to make a better life for themselves and their families. What started as a grass-roots movement pushing for political reform at the local and municipal levels soon began to encompass
Jurgis gets a job on the first day of trying. He is paid the princely sum of $1.25 a day. In Lithuania, this is a lot of money. With the wages of himself and his brother. entire family should be able to keep solvent.
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, he exposes corruption in both business and politics, as well as its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. In a protest novel, the ills of society are dramatized for its effect on its characters in the story. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the lethal and penurious conditions that laborers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics, and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
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.
How The Jungle Influenced Social Reform and Socialism Beginning in the late 19th century, many people became concerned with many social problems resulting from the industrialization period of the United States. People began to demand reform. The writing of the book The Jungleby Upton Sinclair was one of the most influential tools used to reform many American industries. In this book, Sinclair focuses on the unsanitary conditions and corruption that was involved in the Chicago meat packing industry.
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 receive a poor man’s salary. They worked long strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process. The corporation had no compassion towards its laborers. This extract from Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explains the terrible conditions in which employees worked: “...your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell,” (Sinclair, 12). Mikalos, a character in the novel, is used in this instance to personify the way in which the employees had to conduct their job. They had to focus on working as fast as humanly possible even if they were injured. The character states that he accidently made a laceration while deboning an animal. Even though his injury is significant, he is not to breathe a word of it to his employer. The employer cares not of the accident nor of the worker wasting valuable time chatting about “frivolous” events such as their health. It did not matter if a laborer lost a finger, the only thing that mattered to the businessmen was making more money. This was how life was working in the factory and it shows that the industries
Jurgis once hope to embrace as he lived the “American dream” is nothing more than
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
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.
The “new” immigrants came over hungry for work and were willing to work for a fraction of what the “old” immigrants would. The “new” immigrants came in unskilled and unaccustomed to American society, took the “old” immigrants jobs and shook up their neighborhoods; this created much tension between the two groups. Riis like others, hated some ethnic groups more than others, and in How the Other Half Lives establishes a general hierarchy placing the “old” immigrants on the top, groups such as Germans, Irish and the English. In the middle Riis ranks the Italians, Jews, and blacks. On the bottom of the ladder Riis places the Chinese.
Foreigners, who were uneducated about America’s customs, were unable to find jobs or prevent swindlers from causing their already insufficient wealth to subside. Because of this, Jurgis and his family’s economic and social lives have changed drastically. For instance, in Lithuania, Jurgis and his family had many friends and, therefore, were well-respected in their community.... ... middle of paper ...
People thought the market would work things out on its own. The government set no safety regulations and let the corruption skyrocket. Jugis and Ona learn the hard way about the stresses of being immigrants. “ Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would soon find out his error, for nobody rose in the Packingtown by doing good work. If you met a man who was raised in Packingtown, you met a knave.”
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.
When trying to attain work, lodging or even food it becomes a grave handicap and an almost impenetrable barrier. Many capitalistic members of American society utilized this handicap to their advantage as a means to swindle and outright steal from the newly arrived immigrants. Making enough money to survive while protecting what they already had became the second challenge for the freshly arrived immigrant. Smooth talking sales people, corrupt politicians, and a legal system that favored the capitalistic establishment all seemed to work together to disenfranchise the immigrant population at every opportunity. Throughout Sinclair's novel we see illustrations of corruption at every level.
"The Jungle" portrays the lower ranks of the industrial world as the scene of a naked struggle for survival. Where workers not only are forced to compete with each other but, if they falter, are hard pressed to keep starvation from their door and a roof over their heads. With unions weak and cheap labor plentiful, a social Darwinist state of "the survival of the fittest" exists. The real story revolves around the integration and eventual disintegration of Jurgis Rudkis and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who move to the Chicago stockyards in hopes of a better life. Unfortunately, their hopes quickly disintegrate; like thousands of other unskilled immigrants at the turn of the century, financial necessity forces them into virtual slave labor in order to survive. For Jurgis and his family, the slave master is the ruthless and greedy meat packing industry, whose leaders value their workers no more than the animals they slaughter.