The Jungle
The early twentieth century was proven to some people to be harsh working conditions for immigrants. Upton Sinclair was consider a muckraker for exposing the truths of the meat packing industries. Sinclair took his findings and composed them into the book “The Jungle”. In “The Jungle”, Sinclair writes about the ongoing battle between the proletarians and Bourgeoisies
Upton Sinclair’s findings unveiled the corruption of capitalism in the early twentieth century. The raw definition of capitalism is the following; “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state”. In this time period, capitalism worked in favor for the Bourgeoisies rather
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than the Proletarians. The factory workers would literally take a good, strong, healthy man and turn him or her into a weak, near death, or even dead person. The workers would be expected to work in unhealthy conditions, hazardous conditions, and paid little for their risk taking their work demanded them to do. The owners would also cut corners. Not only by doing this it was hazardous for the workers but for the people of America too! In more cases than one, the meat was not sanitized and filled with infectious and deadly diseases. Thus the workers would eat this meat causing them to become ill and still expected to work. Literally all odds were stacked against the workers. If the workers couldn’t handle the work they would be immediately replace with someone who could. In the end the factory owners would crush, belittled, minimize, the idea of the “American Dream” immigrants’ strived to achieve. The setting of the book plays a big role in Upton Sinclair’s discoveries of the corruption of the meat packing industries. One of the biggest meat packing industries was found in Chicago. A little ways from the main part of Chicago, one would find a town, named Packingtown. Packingtown was filled with many factories and many immigrants. Some of these immigrants at first were willing to work to get a piece of the “American Dream” As the book goes on to tell these immigrants would be soon working just to survive. One would also find Jails. Jails that were filled with Proletarians, who tried to take a stands against the Bourgeoisies. There would be court rooms filled with judges, which work in conspiracy, with the Bourgeoisies. Thus putting away the Proletarians who were sick of the controlled the Bourgeoisies had over them. Packingtown even had Brothels. Brothels were filled with woman of the Proletarians class, who could no longer could find jobs to pay for their livelihood. These woman would be trapped into forever of selling their bodies to support themselves and their families to stay alive.
One would also find Durham Company, one of the main meat industries in Packingtown. There would even be country sides that men would run off to because they were fed up with the corrupted controlled of the factory owners. These men would become hobos and live off the land. They would even resort to the criminal life. These man, woman, and children would do anything, just to keep alive in the early twentieth century.
In the book “The Jungle”, Upton Sinclair views two types of classes throughout the book. Those classes are the Bourgeoisies and the Proletarians. One could even go farther and say; Upton Sinclair views the Bourgeoisies as the antagonist and the Proletarians as the protagonist. The antagonist are the people who tend to make the protagonist lives a living hell. Bourgeoisies or better known as the factory owners work the working men, women, and children to death! The working men or proletarians are the ones who take this work because they are deceived into thinking they can have a piece of the “American Dream”. In reality the Antagonist never give the protagonist
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their piece of the o called “American Dream”. Upton Sinclair uses three main characters to capture the reality of what goes on in the meat packing industries world. These characters consisted of Jurgis, Ona, and Teta Elizbieta. All three of them are Lithia immigrants. Sinclair depicts Jurgis as an immigrant without any flaw. Jurgis when he first came to America he was viewed as a young, strong, optimistic, energetic, dedicated to his family, naïve, and even passionate to achieve the “American Dream”. Jurgis believed the “American Dream”; was hard work will generated rewards. This statement is true in present day America. Back in the twentieth century this statement couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jurgis was consider the breadwinner of the family at the beginning. As Jurgis continues to work for the meat packing industries he goes from a person eager to work, to a person working just to survive and live the next day. He would eventually learn the Bourgeoisies had the upper hand. Jurgis would even bring brought to the point of trying to fight them. He would fight the Bourgeoisies out of anger trying to defend his wife, Ona, honor. The Bourgeoisies would have him be thrown into jail, just for trying to take a stand. The corruption would eventually lead to the death of his wife Ona and his only son little Antanas. The Bourgeoisies would take any chance Jurgis ever had at having a family. After this point, Jurgis would turn to a life of drinking, crime, and abandonment of the rest of the family. Eventually Jurgis would return to the family. Throughout the whole time Jurgis turned to crime, and abandonment, Upton Sinclair wouldn’t portrayed Jurgis as a bad person for doing that. It was the exacted opposite, Jurgis was still view as this flawless person. Upton Sinclair would show the reason for Jurgis outburst were because he had no other choice! In this time period the factory owners had the upper hand and if he wanted to survive he would have to play their game. Sinclair would use Ona to compliment Jurgis characteristics. Ona was viewed as the worrier of the family. She was fragile, easily frightened, and she was extremely young at the began. Overall she was a lovely person, who had loyalty and trust that took away Jurgis anger of the life they had. Ona was the reason why Jurgis didn’t turn to drinking or crime right away. In away Sinclair portrays her as the person who keeps Jurgis inline at the beginning of the book. As the book continued, Ona would lose her health, and be eventually raped by one of the higher ups. This would drive her crazy, and cause her to lie to Jurgis. The life the Bourgeoisies place upon her would lead to her young death. Sinclair showed Ona as the one who suffer and didn’t have much strength to carry on. Sinclair would use Ona’s stepmother, Teta Elzbieta to hold everyone together. Sinclair description of Teta Elzbieta is the number one care taker. Unlike the others she was older and ha six other children and Ona when she came to America at first. Teta Elzbieta endures the most adversities. She loses two of her children, her stepdaughter, Jonas and Jurgis abandon her, but Sinclair doesn’t demonstrate this as bad events. Instead Sinclair uses Elzbieta’s trials to show a person who continued to stay strong and hold onto the old country’s traditions. In away Sinclair demonstrates Teta Elzbieta as the person who keeps the family going and alive. Upton Sinclair uses all the characters to depict the corruption the Bourgeoisies had over the Proletarians. The cardinal point for Upton Sinclair writing “The Jungle” is to show the corruption of capitalism in the twentieth century.
Sinclair focuses on the point why some people prefer Socialism over Capitalism. The raw definition of socialism is the following; “a political and economic theory of social; organization that advocated that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”. Sinclair shows the corruption of capitalism through the corruption the factory owners hold on the factory workers. The time period the book takes place in has a major influence on how the story plays out. Back in the twentieth century, regulation for workers were a lot different compared to what workers have today. The requirements, children working, working conditions, and wages were far from what people have today. The conditions in the twentieth century caused the workers to act out, and motivated some of them to fight against the Bourgeoisies. For some people they may find it appalling that is how capitalism was run back then. For those people they would be for capitalism in today’s society because time has change. No longer are the working conditions as bad as they were back in the twentieth century. To them in today’ society they would find Socialism appalling. The thought of working very hard compared to some other, yet being paid the same is infer orating to them. If one looks at what happen in the twentieth century it would be
infer orating to have capitalism because it wasn’t working in favor for them. In today’s society capitalism works in favor for those who chose to get educated and work hard. Times have changed since Upton Sinclair has written “The Jungle”, but that doesn’t mean his book isn’t still relevant. If Americans never learned about what went wrong in the early twentieth century, then they could never learned from the mistakes. In order to not repeat bad parts of history, people have to be educated on what happened in the past. What these immigrants went through in the early twentieth century, no one should ever endure. This also doesn’t mean immigrants should get a free ride in, there has to be a middle of the extreme working conditions of the twentieth century and to letting them in free. That is one lesson as a whole American people can learned from Upton Sinclair and his book “The Jungle”.
Upon his 1906 publishing of The Jungle, Sinclair was coined as an avid “muckraker” when President Roosevelt addressed an audience in April of that year. When asked whether or not the novel provided a realistic account of workers conditions within the Chicago meat packing industry, Roosevelt accused Sinclair of being a liar in an attempt to discredit him. A large part of this was credited to Roosevelt’s personal distaste for Sinclair’s apparent link to the Socialist party but, Roosevelt was also unaware that Sinclair had worked undercover at the plant to gather first hand and accurate accounts. The Jungle shined light on the poor working conditions of workers in a meat packing facility. Throughout the novel, Sinclair gave gruesome examples of what workers went through each and every day. Each department of the facility was faced with its own risks and challenges, “There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description
...ism at the end of The Jungle, he has no other options. He has been longing for someone or something to provide him with answers to what is wrong with the world. Although Jurgis does not pray, socialism is the answer to his prayers. Sinclair depicts a socialist community in which there is much love and care and support for those who need it, a direct representation for what Day saw in the people after the San Francisco earthquake.
In 1900, there were over 1.6 million people living in Chicago, the country's second largest city. Of those 1.6 million, nearly 30% were immigrants. Most immigrants came to the United States with little or no money at all, in hope of making a better life for themselves. A city like Chicago offered these people jobs that required no skill. However, the working and living conditions were hazardous and the pay was barely enough to survive on. This is the bases for Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle.
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” he exposes corruption in business and government and its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. The novel follows immigrant Jurgis Rudkus as he struggles against the slow ANNIHILATION of his family and is REBORN after discovering that socialism as a cure away to all capitalism’s problems. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the DANGEROUS, INHUMAINE conditions that workers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
To understand the ways in which political systems are important to this novel, it is necessary to define both capitalism and socialism as they are relevant to The Jungle. Capitalism, and more specifically, laissez-faire capitalism, is the economic system in America. It basically means that producers and consumers have the right to accumulate and spend their money through any legal means they choose. It is the economic system most fitting with the idea of the American Dream. The American Dream portr...
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.
Packingtown was said to be one of the more dangerous and filthy neighborhoods of the
During the late 1800's and early 1900's hundreds of thousands of European immigrants migrated to the United States of America. They had aspirations of success, prosperity and their own conception of the American Dream. The majority of the immigrants believed that their lives would completely change for the better and the new world would bring nothing but happiness. Advertisements that appeared in Europe offered a bright future and economic stability to these naive and hopeful people. Jobs with excellent wages and working conditions, prime safety, and other benefits seemed like a chance in a lifetime to these struggling foreigners. Little did these people know that what they would confront would be the complete antithesis of what they dreamed of.
Even before the beginning of the twentieth century, the debate between socialists and capitalists has raged. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, he portrays capitalism as the cause of all evils in society. Sinclair shows the horrors of capitalism. In The Gospel of Wealth, by Andrew Carnegie, he portrays capitalism as a system of opportunity. However, both Carnegie and Sinclair had something to gain from their writings; both men had an agenda. Capitalism and socialism both have advantages and pitfalls; when capitalism is adopted using certain socialist ideals, a truly prosperous society exists.
In the early 1900’s there was a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants coming to the eastern shores of America. Many were pulled to America because of its economic opportunity, freedom, need for labor and its beautiful country. Immigrants were excited to come to America and were pushed from their home countries because of food shortages, overpopulation, war and political instability. This was going on in an important era in American history called the “gilded age”. It was a time of economic growth, and industrialization but also had high percentages of poverty mainly in urban environments. The majority of the immigrants intended to advance out west but actually settled in the eastern cities. In the book The Jungle, Jargis and his family moved to the Americas and hoped to live the “American Dream” but it was the exact opposite when they arrived. Jurgis, his wife Ona, and the rest of the Lithuanian family struggled with working conditions, living conditions, health problems, and maintaining a stable workplace. They were all dealt with disgusting conditions in the boarding houses and a brutal working environment in Packingtown. In 1905, when the book was written, there were very little government regulations, especially in the meat packing industry, which led to unsafe working conditions and sanitation issues.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
When one gets down to the roots of capitalism you find that it is a form of government that allows the rich to get richer, the poor, poorer and the middle class to stay the same. Karl Marx wrote a book, Kapital about the what capitalism does to the people in a society, how it takes the humainty out of being and replaces it with x. Not only does it do that but it creates a chain of commodities, fetishisis, and alienation within a society.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
Capitalism dominates the world today. Known as a system to create wealth, capitalism’s main purpose is to increase profits through land, labor and free market. It is a replacement of feudalism and slavery. It promises to provide equality and increases living standards through equal exchanges, technological innovations and mass productions. However, taking a look at the global economy today, one can clearly see the disparity between developed and developing countries, and the persistence of poverty throughout the world despite the existence of abundant wealth. This modern issue was predicted and explained a hundred and fifty years ago in Karl Marx’s Capital.