Upton Sinclair’s story, The Jungle, represents the American dream to have a rich, successful life and the downfalls American people faced with business corruption. Sinclair used a naturalistic view to expose these downfalls in American life and industry. Naturalism was a literary movement during the 1880’s to the 1930’s that emphasized detailed realism. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels. Writers applied Social Darwinism into their works. Emerging in the United States around 1870, the theory applied biological ideas of survival of the fittest and natural selection to society and politics. It suggests that people were victims of poor social conditions, economics, heredity, and environments …show more content…
which had an inescapable force beyond their control. These conditions shaped a person’s life and character in an impersonal way. American naturalist developed the thoughts of social and political dynamics of American urban life. This movement depicted believable, everyday reality, exposing dark hardships of life such as poverty, disease, and corruption. The Jungle was published during a time of mass immigration from Europe into the United States.
Europeans were flooding into the United States in search of the American dream, the dream of a better, simpler life with easier riches. Unfortunately, these new comers were bound to a life of hard labor, dangerous jobs, and insufficient salaries. These immigrants lived in overcrowded, run-down tenement houses that had no clean water or proper sewage, offering a cheap source of labor. Sinclair’s story emphasizes the life of a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis, who moves to American in search for a better life for him and his family. When he arrives, he finds a job in the meatpacking industry, run by uncaring, corrupt businessmen. Being paid a very minimum amount of money, the family finds itself in a life of …show more content…
poverty. Sinclair was an American muckraker, an investigating journalist who works to expose social injustice and corruption. He documented the inhumane working environments in industrial capitalism. Sinclair argued that socialism was the only solution to fix the corruption. He ends his novel on an optimistic note, turning towards socialism and the great things it can accomplish. He brought a progressive socialist political commitment to the naturalist movement. He uses a powerful naturalistic view to expose the horrible conditions of the meatpacking industries, critique business practices, and the living conditions during the early 1900’s in Chicago and other major industrial cities.
Here, the population was booming, cities were growing, and factories expanding. Along with all the growth came the horrors. Overcrowding in cities led to unsanitary tenement houses, uncleanliness lead to disease, and livelihoods turned into corruption. Sinclair portrays Jurgis as a man engaged in a brutal struggle. Jurgis must survive the “lawless jungle” where only the most fit succeed. Jurgis is treated like a slave, someone that could easily be replaced, run by the brutal slave driver, his boss. When he falls ill, seen as unfit to continue working, he loses his job forcing him to live a life of a hobo. His environment forced him to become a conman to
survive. The Jungle led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. This act prevents the manufacturing, sale, and transportation of misbranded foods and medications. Upton Sinclair’s novel brought the unsanitary packing plants to the attention of Americans. This book had an enormous impact on American industry. Because of The Jungles publication, Americans would not eat spoiled, diseased food. The Pure Food act is still impacting people today. Factories and industrial plants must follow specific regulations such as correct packaging, and the obliteration of unsafe or ineffective products. The Jungle is a powerful naturalistic exposure into the horrific meatpacking industry. Upton Sinclair’s novel depicts how society determines the fulfillment of the American dream! His story changed the way industries worked back in the 1900’s and still effect the way they manufacture now.
The difficult living situations for many people in the early 20th century were discussed in the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. The book describes an immigrant family’s struggle to survive after moving to America. The family experiences unsafe working conditions, dangerous child labor and poverty. Sinclair uses these images to shed light on some of America’s troubles, to disparage capitalism and to promote socialism.
After Jurgis works in the packing house for a while, a man tells him in Lithuanian that he can now become a citizen. Jurgis is then registered to vote, and told about one of the candidates. Nothing is said of the other candidate, so he votes for the man. that he is told of, and receives money for this vote. Another problem faced by most of the immigrants of Chicago is making a living from it.
The United States of America is known as the land of opportunity and dreams. People dream of migrating to this nation for a chance of a better a life. This belief has been around for many years, ever since the birth of the United States; therefore it’s a factor in which motivate many people migrate to the United States. Upton Sinclair, author of the Jungle, narrates the life of a Lithuanian family and there struggles with work, crime, family loss, and survival in the city of Packingtown. Sinclair expresses her disgust as well as the unbelievable truth of life in the United States involving politics, corruption, and daily struggle that many suffered through in the 19th and 20th century.
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.
The main theme of these 6 chapters is "The lie of the American Dream". Jurgis thought by coming here to the United States, he would find everything easy, but everything turned against his wishes. In chapter 18, he's out of jail, free, only to find someone else in his home. He realized that his family had lost their home because of lack of money, and because he wasn't there when they needed him the most. Later finding them and finding his wife giving birth with complications and smelling death around him. Is a very shocking and yet horrifying idea.
...ous struggles of Jurgis and his family. Not only does the family suffer from poverty, but they also suffer from a poor knowledge of English, the glares of the townspeople, and the damaging effects of hard manual labor. The family gets harmed by the bosses in Packingtown as well, they receive unfair wages for long days at work. They also get deceived by the housing agent, forcing them to pay much more money for the house as a result of insurance, an expense they were not prepared for. As a result of the hard manual labor and his name being put on the blacklist, Jurgis resorts to “hoboing it” just to survive towards the end of the novel. The poverty tears the family apart: they end up splitting up towards the end of the novel, all going separate ways. Poverty negatively impacted the familial relationships of thousands of immigrants in Chicago in the early 1900s.
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.
A well-discussed debate in today’s economy is the issues concerning immigrants and their yearning desire to become American citizens. As displayed in The Jungle, a rather perturbing novel about the trials and ruthless temptations early America presents to a Lithuanian family, adjusting to a new surroundings and a new way of life is quite difficult. To make matters worse, language barriers and lack of domestic knowledge only seem to entice starvation and poverty among newly acquired citizens, who simply wish to change their social and economic lives to better themselves and their families. Such is the case of Jurgis Rudkus and his extended family, consisting of cousins, in-laws, and their multitude of children. Natives to the country of Lithuania, Jurgis and his family decide that, after Jurgis and his love, Ona, marry, they will move to Chicago to find work in order to support their family.
The novel is an exposé of the harsh and vicious reality of the American Dream'. George and Lennie are poor homeless migrant workers doomed to a life of wandering and toil. They will be abused and exploited; they are in fact a model for all the marginalized poor of the world. Injustice has become so much of their world that they rarely mention it. It is part of their psyche. They do not expect to be treated any different no matter where they go.
The book, The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, has portrayed how conditions and social norms of the early 1900’s helped shape society through social reform. Sexism, racism, and class, shaped the experiences and choices of the immigrants in The Jungle throughout the book. The huge difference between the classes was the most significant of the three. Sinclair used the story of one immigrant and his family to help show what was going on in society at that time, to raise awareness, and to promote socialism.
Naturalism is about bringing humans into the “natural world”. We, as humans, are seen as aspects of nature collectively not separate like they once were. “Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world and derived from conditions that precede us and surround us. Each of us is an unfolding natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself ” (“A Guide for Naturalism”). Humans are like “animals” they contain the same drives that animals have. They are just plain “natural”. Many authors express naturalism in their writings such as Kate Chopin. She expresses a naturalistic view on sexual drives which classify her as a naturalistic writer.
This critical article review will focus on Scott Derrick analyzing the use of naturalism in
The Jungle vents the often overlooked trials and baffling tribulations of Lithuanian newcomers. Upton Sinclair, a well known political activist for the Socialist party writes this story as a glance into the events happening during his life-span. At the time of The Jungle's publication, Sinclair was twenty-eight years old, and he used the profits from his book to run for Congress. During this time, many things were happening in America: the Industrial Age was at its peak; child labor was running rampant; immigration through Ellis Island boomed; and the Communist witch hunt began. These time-markers are viewed through the lens of the setting, the industrialized city of Chicago. The summary of The Jungle is one of a depressed and deceived Lithuanian man. Overall, The Jungle is a book which reflects the frenzied fight for survival in a new land. The Lithuanian people, along with many others, had come to America under the presupposition of a better life. Instead of finding happiness, freedom, and glorious wealth, they found disease, injustice, and meaningless
During a few decades, American society had been through different significant changes such as the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and Scientific Development. These changes had given a massive influence to the American literary movement in the nineteenth century. In fact, some of the literary works at that time are a reflection of those changes. One remarkable intellectual trend, which emerged in America in the nineteenth century and which subsequently became a literary movement is Naturalism (Kendir). In this case, Scientific Development is a major factor that influences the movement of literary naturalism. Charles Darwin is the one who brought up a new concept of sciences, in which Stephen Crane will use it as a concept for his short story “The Open Boat”. From Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species,” there are two concepts that can be found in “The Open Boat.” The first concept is natural selection, which means only individuals with certain advantageous characteristic will remain survived (Padian, 2009). Apparently, Crane used this Darwin’s idea as a foundation of the story for his short story “The Open Boat.” Then, the next concept is survival of the fittest which means nature only selected the fittest individuals that can adapt to any changes. In “The Open Boat,” Crane explicitly tells the readers the effort from the four men and their struggle for existence. In brief, the influence of Darwinism had played a pivotal role in literary movement by inserting a new philosophy and idea of life based upon science, in which this idea is used by Stephen Crane for his short story “The Open Boat.”
Literature, throughout history, has brought people together by inciting human emotions and portraying ideas felt across cultures. In the latter half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the predominant culture in Europe was that of industrialism and the explosion of human knowledge and development. The revolutionary scientific discoveries of prominent biologists such as Charles Darwin caused a rift in the culture of the time period, challenging people to look at life in a completely new way. Beginning in the 1870s, many European authors began to write stories based on the emerging idea that one’s life circumstances result from an uncontrollable genetic predisposition (Lehan 3). This movement came to be known as naturalism and spread to America by the turn of the century, influencing authors like Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, and Émile Zola (Matterson). Literary naturalism, the movement that falls between realism and modernism in the evolution of literature, was a rather pessimistic literary movement which aimed to apply Darwinian principles to its characters and plot lines, study the human’s place in nature, and conclude that all fortune and misfortune in life is simply the result of heredity, instinct, and passion.