The Power of Upton Sinclair and The Jungle
The novel "The Jungle", is a hybrid of history, literature, and propaganda. It was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair, to demonstrate the control big business had over the average working man, and his family. Sinclair was one of the most famous muckrakers in history; he exposed scandals and political corruption in the early nineteen hundreds (Literature 572). He attempted to show his idea of the solution to this problems of the times: socialism. At the time Sinclair wrote, communism was not yet around, so the anti-socialistic fears were not yet aroused.
The socialist party, to which Sinclair belonged since he was twenty-four, was moderately popular in certain areas (Literature 572). The American people were, in a way, open to the suggestion. As the title proposes, the novels is meant to show how American economic power had led big business, trusts, and incorporations to take control of the country, and turn it into a brutal jungle, where the `little guy' had nearly no hope for survival, let alone hope of the American dream of prosperity.
Sinclair wasn't chiefly interested in journalism, as some believe. He paid his way through college writing cheap adventure novels, after which he began writing more serious works, but was extremely unsuccessful, making less than a thousand dollars in four years. When his bad luck ran out, an opportunity arouse, and he took advantage of it. The editor of a socialist magazine, called the Appeal to Reason, offered him five hundred dollars to write a novel about industrial workers, and their slave like conditions. They planned to serialize the novel, that is, release it piece by piece, much like sit-coms are done toda...
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... they can out of those who are underneath them. It also offers a look at the unique techniques used in this time period to obtain the writers goals. Muckraking was an efficient way to propose an idea. No one would have listened to the idea of socialism, had there not been a problem it could be used to solve. Sinclair used his gifts as an author to promote his cause, and although socialism never succeeded in America, Sinclair is still remembered as the pinnacle of muckrakers; his books are still read and studied to this day, and will be for a long time to come.
Wroks Cited
Matuz, Roger. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1991.
[Literary Digest] "A Change in the Spirit of Magazine Criticism," Literary Digest 32 (May 19, 1906): 750-51.
Literature Lover's Companion, Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 2001.
Emerson wrote, “Times of terror are times of eloquence.” Based on your reading of Bitzer’s article, what does this sentiment mean to you? Given your understanding, illustrate this concept by providing three illustrations, one each from the three different contexts indicated below, a(n):
Nehemi Winn Mary Hill American Studies 12 April 2016 The Jungle and The Progressive Era During the early 1900s, the changing views on human rights redefined the standards of society and government in America. When Upton Sinclair published his novel The Jungle, it immediately affected American society and American federal policy, although Sinclair had hoped to bring about a different reaction.
Capitalism underwent a severe attack at the hands of Upton Sinclair in this novel. By showing the misery that capitalism brought the immigrants through working conditions, living conditions, social conditions, and the overall impossibility to thrive in this new world, Sinclair opened the door for what he believed was the solution: socialism. With the details of the meatpacking industry, the government investigated and the public cried out in disgust and anger. The novel was responsible for the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. With the impact that Sinclair must have known this book would have, it is interesting that he also apparently tried to make it fuction as propaganda against capitalism and pro-socialism.
Ida Tarbell, another noted muckraker, wrote a number of articles for McClure's, some of which were gathered in her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company. Muckraking appeared in fiction as well. David Graham Phillips, 4 who began his career as a newspaperman, went on to write muckraking magazine articles and eventually novels about contemporary economic, political, and social problems such as insurance scandals, state and municipal corruption, shady Wall Street dealings, slum life, and women's emancipation. Perhaps the best-known muckraking novel was Upton Sinclair's 5
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Sinclair, has shown in a dramatic style the hardships and obstacles which Jurgis and fellow workers had to endure. He made the workers sound so helpless and the conditions so gruesome, that the reader almost wants a way out for Jurgis. Sinclair's The Jungle is a "subliminal" form of propaganda for
His writing was on the right track, but he still didn’t have that one book to put him over the top. In 1900 Sinclair married his first wife. This was a start of a whole new era of writing for him. By 1904 Sinclair was moving toward a realistic fiction type of writing. He had become a regular reader of the "Appeal to Reason", which was a popular socialist-populist weekly magazine at that time. Upton’s big break came in 1906 when he published a book called, " The Jungle." As a writer this is where Sinclair gained most of his fame. This book gave him not only fame, but it also led to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. This book had the deepest impact since Harriet Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The books popularity enabled Sinclair to establish and support the socialistic Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, N.J. However the popularity of his type of writing fell away after that year. After " The Jungle" was written it set off many similar studies of a group, and industry. or a region. Among some of them were: "The Metropolis" (1908) which was a exploration of New York people, "King Coal" (1917) which was a story about the Colorado Mining strike of 1914, and "Oil!" which was considered one of Sinclair’s most influential writings.
Upton Sinclair lived in a problematic world as a child. He was born during the 1870s in New York, which was the time of the Long Depression. As referenced from its name, the Depression was long, but was not as economically catastrophic as the Great Depression (Long). The Depression had a horrendous impact on the Sinclair family. Poverty continuously plagued them, threatening to push them off the brink of starvation (Simkin). There was another pressing issue the family had to deal with: Sinclair’s father, Sinclair Sr., was an alcoholic (Simkin). Sinclair Sr. had trou...
Many impoverished people immigrated to America in hopes of achieving the American Dream but instead were faced with dangerous working conditions while the factory and corporation owners increased their wealth and profit by exploiting this cheap means of labor. Upton Sinclair succeeded to show the nature of the wage slavery occurring in America in the beginning of the twentieth century. People felt distressed and unimportant in the community because they were being used by the wealthy to generate capital leading the industry for the future success and efficacy in the market. Upton Sinclair was an American journalist who incorporated his personal research of the meatpacking industry conditions and people’s life, as well as the structure of the present business into the novel under analysis. Thus, real facts and data were incorporated into this literary work, which helps the audience to feel involved in the work and understand the overall atmosphe...
Many scholars, once the Enuma Elish was discovered, began to perceive Genesis as simply “another creation story.” Study of the Enuma Elish finds many similarities throughout both itself and the Bible. The Enuma Elish begins “when on high” whereas Genesis begins “in the beginning,” both show strong connection by the bestowing of names to show importance, both have a darkness and emptiness perceived as a chaos before both stories, water is divided into upper and lower bodies, The Enuma Elish is written on seven tablets and Genesis takes place over seven days, and finally both works detail how man is created on the sixth installment. While the similarities are numerous it must be taken into account that God from Genesis is the sole higher power and comes with terms of peace and composure whereas, the Enuma Elish is based upon many Gods and maintain the world with war and violence. When considering how early man may have conveyed early Christianity it seems as a simpler and more enjoyable way to live life. From looking at these similarities one can conclude how the Bible, with a more approachable method to living well, became the more popular of the two resulting in its long stance as one of the world’s most popular systems for living ethically. (King;
In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up - for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground - t...
First, let us analyze the particulars of the Christian Genesis story as to begin formulating the basis of comparison and contrast. We shall look at the two parts of Genesis, the first discussing the formulation of earth and its inner particulars, in concert with the first few verses associated with the second part of Genesis, which touches on the creation of the first man and woman:
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.
Throughout history, people have asked the ultimate question 'Where did it all begin?' For the majority of fundamentalist Christians, the belief is that the beginning of all life itself came from the supreme power of the Almighty Lord God. This point of view appears in the Bible, but can this be taken in a completely literal sense? Did one God create it all? Through examination of the literal and contextual meanings truth and fiction can be separated.