There are many characters in The Jungle. These characters vary widely in their professions, social status, and economic status. The main character in the novel is a Lithuanian named Jurgis Rudkus. His wife is Ona Lukoszaite, also a Lithuanian. Their son is named Antanas. Mike Scully is a powerful political leader in Packingtown. Phil Connor is a foreman in Packingtown, “politically connected” (through Scully), and a man who causes much trouble for Jurgis. Jack Duane is an experienced and educated criminal who is also “politically connected”. A man called Ostrinski is a half-blind tailor who teaches Jurgis about Socialism. There are also the members of Ona’s family, each of whom play minor roles in the story. The story opens with the feast at Jurgis and Ona’s wedding in America, but soon flashes back to the time before they left Lithuania. Jurgis met Ona at a horse fair, and fell in love with her. Unfortunately, they were too poor to have a wedding, since Ona’s father just died. In the hopes of finding freedom and fortune, they left for America, bringing many members of Ona’s family with them.
After arriving in America, they are taken to Packingtown to find work. Packingtown is a section of Chicago where the meat packing industry is centralized. They take a tour of the plant, and see the unbelievable efficiency and speed at which hogs and cattle are butchered, cooked, packed, and shipped. In Packingtown, no part of the animal is wasted. The tour guide specifically says “They use everything about the hog except the squeal,” (The Jungle, page 38).
Jurgis’s brawny build quickly gets him a job on the cattle killing beds. The other members of the family soon find jobs, except for the children. They are put into school. At first, Jurgis is happy with his job and America, but he soon learns that America is plagued by corruption, dishonesty, and bribery. He is forced to work at high speeds for long hours with low pay, and so is the rest of the family. He is cheated out of his money several times. The children must leave school and go to work to help the family survive. This means they will never receive the education they need to rise above this. Ona is not permitted to take a holiday, even for her own wedding.
After the birth of her first son, Antanas, Ona soon becomes pregnant again.
As the Joad family faces the same trials that the turtle faces, and as the desperate farmers have to deal with car dealerships, the intercalary chapters help to set the tone of, as well as integrate the various themes of The
The way they prepared the hogs, first they were hung upside down, then they were attached to a moving cable; systematically “disassembled.” A worker would slit the throats, another one would “scald” them with hot water, then scrapped and gutted out. After that the hogs would get decapitated and refrigerated. The Chicago River became the “waste basket”, they would pump the blood and waste into the River. The hog’s lard would get converted into horns and the hoofs into glue. The intestines were made into sausages and contained mediocre quality chemically treated meat which included parts or rats and roaches. However, working in a slaughter house was more dangerous that eating their processed meats. Each year, hundreds of workers would get disabled and killed by on the job incidents. The workers work from around fifty-five to sixty hours per week and pay was low. They would earn around fifteen to twenty cents an hour. Each year the workers would get laid off for an approximate of eight weeks with no pay; they would have earned $475 per year. Most of the workers working in the meat packing industry would not earn enough money to support their families. Even though
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.
Expenses increase and forces the children of the family to find work like the adults. Jobs in Packtown are back-breaking , unsafe, and have no regard for individual workers. The oldest of the family gets a job, but it is to difficult for the old man and he quickly dies. The man of the couple, “Jurgis,” is forced to work in an unheated packing house during the winter. Jurgis is injured and cant work for three months receiving no pay. One of the children dies of food poisoning. Jurgis joins a union and slowly begins to understand the way politics and bribery that control Packingtown. After attacking the boss of his wife for making her sleep with him, Jurgis is put in jail for a month. While in Jail the family has been evicted from there home and is living in a run-down boardinghouse. When Jurgis returns home he finds his wife in premature labor, and in the process of giving birth the child and her.
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.
Tom Joad is an ex-convict that was only into his own self-interest and lived by a mantra of live your life day by day and not concerned with the future, to becoming a man who thinks about the future and someone with morals and an obligation to help others. Ma Joad is a typical woman of the early 1900’s whose main role was a mother only with a role of caring and nurturing. Later in the novel, she becomes an important figure for the family and is responsible for making decisions in keeping the family together and emphasizes the importance of unity. Another important transition in the book is the family starting off as a single close knit unit to depending on other families to survive. This common interest and struggle bonded the community of individual families to a single one. Steinbeck wrote this novel very well, by having great character dynamics and development that displays the characters strengths and also their
Socialism versus Capitalism in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair 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.
When arriving to America the family sees the real way that the people live in the city and immediately know it is not the life they thought it would be. When arriving to the city Jurgis says, “Tomorrow, I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get one also; and then we can get a place of our own”(Sinclair 35). Jurgis arrives to america with an eagerness to find work to support his family which becomes more and more difficult for him as the story goes on. The constant bad luck that happens to Jurgis is later connected to the faults of capitalism and how corrupt it is for the working class in this society. Soon Jurgis could not support his family on his own and eventually the entire family needs to get a job to pay for their costs. Sinclair builds sympathy for Jurgis and his family throughout the beginning of the novel but also depicts the poverty of the working class and how they are equally struggling to make a living.
A narcissist is one who believes “he or she is ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special” people. They exploit others for their own advantage, lack empathy, and are “preoccupied with fantasies” or ideals that can be unrealistic. They believe they are the “primary importance in everybody’s life”. (“Narcissistic Personality”) Henry James’ theme in his short story, “The Beast in the Jungle”, is about a man, who is so egotistical and self-absorbed that he misses what life has to offer him, in particular, love, because of the narcissistic behavior he is doomed to live a life of loneliness and misery. John Marcher, the protagonist of “The Beast in the Jungle”, is about a narcissistic upper-class man who believes his life is to be defined by some unforetold event. He focuses only on himself and as a result, he neglects everything and everyone in his life. Marcher meets May Bartram, a woman who knows his secret, and instead of pursuing a romantic relationship with her, or even a genuine friendship, he uses her for his own benefit. Henry James utilizes a variety of literary devices to convey this theme in his story, such as the title, symbolism, dialogue, and the use of a limited third-person narrative. Henry James leaves us our first clue to the theme in the title, “The Beast in the Jungle”. When one thinks of a beast, they typically imagine something big and ferocious; Marcher’s ego was just that.
One reason for this problem was that there was no real inspection of the meat. A quote from “The Jungle” tells of a government inspector checking the hogs for Tuberculosis, “This government inspector did not have a manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might get by before he had finished his testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you and to explain the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.”# This obviously led to tubercular meat being processed in the packing house. Another problem was the incredible lack of sanitation and the use of spoiled meat, another quote from “The Jungle” tells of how dirty it was in these plants “There would be meat stored in gre...
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906) gives an in depth look at the lives of the immigrant workers here in America. In fact the look was so in depth that the Pure Food and Drug Act was created as a result. Many people tend to focus purely on the unsanitary conditions instead of the hardships faced by the workers. Actually I think that Sinclair doesn’t want the focus on the meatpacking, but on overcoming obstacles, especially through Socialism. Sinclair was himself very outspoken when it came to Socialism.
“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.
Jurgis says, “I will work Harder” (Sinclair 22). He is determined, with just starting a family, to give Ona the life she deserves. As for Jim, he has been working hard to give his family a good life, both men’s lives are headed in the right direction, as far as they know. Until, they come upon some unexpected bumps in the road. One day while Jurgis is working an accident happens; this leaves him unable to work. The doctor tells him, “He would have to lie quiet for two months, and if he went to work he could be lame for life” (Sinclair 121). The news is upsetting to him, he feels like he is letting his family down. Just as Jurgis had his accident, so did Jim with breaking his hand in a fight. With having no source of steady income, Jim becomes fretful that he cannot support his family and keep them together. The turning point for the characters emotions in the end of the stories describes them being proud and feeling accomplished. The narrator writes, “The socialist party was really a Democratic political organization-it was controlled absolutely by its own membership, and had no bosses” (Sinclair 310). Being a part of a group helped Jurgis to want to fight for something again; this helped him to strive to be a better person again. Jim has his feet back under him. He is making money for his family, and is able to support
The novel, The Jungle, shows the life of the main character, Jurgis Ruckus. Jurgis is a Lithuanian man who moves to the Packingtown district of Chicago, Illinois (Jungle 1). Once he arrives in Packingtown, Jurgis marries Ona, who is also from Lithuania (Jungle 1). Ona and Jurgis start a family together, and they work in factories that contain awful working conditions and receive terrible treatment and low wages from their employers. They live with Ona’s family and constantly struggle to make ends meet. The family’s lives quickly take a turn for the worst and Jurgis goes on a downward spiral. In The Jungle, Jurgis is the tragic hero because he tries to provide his family with the America dream, is an avid socialist activist, and even though he has many flaws, they are simply a result of his surroundings.
The lives of the people that resided in the time of the Lost Generation felt as though their existence had no meaning, as if life was completely purposeless. Everyone seemed to go through the motions, using routine and cyclical forms of living. If people are unhappy with where they are in life, they stay there anyway because they feel stuck. Although the title of the novel, The Sun Also Rises, expresses consistency and most of the characters go unchanged, falling into a repetitious pattern, Jake Barnes is able to overcome this pattern of the transience of society by learning how to resolve his personal despair.