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Capitalism in the jungle upton sinclair
Upton sinclair view on capitalism
The effects of unethical behavior
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The Jungle portrays the many injustices that result from capitalism; including terrible working conditions, child labor, political corruption, prostitution, drinking, cheating, and crime. The title, The Jungle, acts as a symbol for Upton Sinclair’s views of capitalism as a system in which only the most corrupt can thrive in. In more depth, the novel’s title symbolizes the competitive and cutthroat nature of capitalism. In the case of the novel, Packingtown is like a jungle, where the strong prey on the weak and all living things are forced to engage in a brutal fight for survival. By relating the story of a family of honest, hardworking immigrants who are destroyed by corruption and evil and can only survive in this way, Sinclair implies …show more content…
In the case of the working class and people overall, capitalism forces even the well-intentioned people to become emotionless and cutthroat and to prey on others in order to survive. As Jurgis and his family members experience worse and worse times in Packingtown, they find themselves surrounded with signs and cases of immorality and corruption; such as laws that are not enforced, politicians out for their own gain, and salesmen who lie about their wares. In other words, a whole community of people trying desperately to get ahead by taking advantage of one another. The family itself is subject to many types of corruption like swindles, grafts, manipulation, and rape. For example, when Jurgis first arrives in America, he tries to succeed as an honest worker at the meatpacking plant. After being continually beaten down and tossed aside, he begins drinking, leaves his remaining family, turns to crime, and later returns to the meatpacking plants where he works for corrupt politicians and as a scab during a strike. This shows the overall effect of capitalism on a hard working man, and shows the only conditions in which Jurgis really survived in was when he was subject to …show more content…
These predators are why families such as Jurgis’ could not survive because these predators make Jurgis “the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his vitals and devoured him…He and his family, helpless women and children, struggling to live, ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they were—and the enemies that had been lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for their blood!”(Chapter 18). These predators include the owners or managers of large factories or businesses, members of the law, and government officials. These predators do a variety of things to utilize their power and prey on the working class. One way in which this utilization of power is seen in the novel is when Ona is being sexually harassed and raped by her boss, Phil Conner. “It was all—it was their plot—Miss Henderson 's plot. She hated me. And—he wanted me...Then he began to—to make love to me...Then he threatened me. He knew all about us, he knew we would starve. He knew your boss—he knew Marija 's. He would hound us to death, he said—then he said if I would—if I —we would all of us be sure of work—always”(Chapter 15). Phil Conner uses his levirage on Ona in order to have his way with her with no consequences. Even when taken to court with Jurgis he gets out of
In The Jungle, Jurgis is worn down by systematic exploitation, forcing him to abandon his morals and obligations. Submission to the process is his only hope of survival for himself and his family. However grim the book is, the reality supports the terrors exposed in The Jungle. Despite the era of “progress,” the culture only brought harm to their life. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy is a “perfect woman” in the lap of luxury. But she is also pulled down by the negative influences of the new society. She is shallow, and is unconsciously careless with others, knowing that she is protected by her wealth. This behavior is encouraged and reinforced in their upper-class world on East Egg. They indirectly made their money though the work of thousands of other less fortunate, such as Jurgis and his family. They live in a world cordoned off by classes. It is a time of capitalism and pleasure, of expansion and exploitation, and under the surface of it all there is a negative undercurrent that affects both the affluent and the beggars. Both books are in unison and explain with piercing foresight how corruption lurks in everyone's lives. Both books illustrate the evils created by industrialization and
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.
The villainy effect Jurgis has on this novel enhances it in means of showing how so many men in this time period survived. In the beginning he wanted everything for his family, and by the end he cared only for himself. He gained an exclusive temper, living his life like a yo-yo having high times and low times. It really was survival for the fittest and if you were not fit enough you would not survive. Jurgis was a not a villain per say, but he lived a villainous lifestyle in the way he was beaten down by so many obstacles that were thrown at him.
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.
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.
These instances show that the only way to survive in Packingtown is to cheat those around you. Instead of the popular “kill or be killed” term, The Jungle transformed it into something along the terms of “making a living off of others or screw yourself”. Sinclair brings these ideals into his novel to connect yet another evil of capitalism. It suggests that if everyone was equal, there wouldn’t be a need to scam others to make money, but because of the hardships it is the only way to thrive.
As a well-known socialist, Sinclair’s purpose in The Jungle is to demonize capitalism. While the concept of socialism is not introduced until the end of the novel, the evils of capitalism is present from the onset. The Jungle is famous for its effect on society and its views of factory labor, even if this was not the author’s intent (Trott, 2006). The novel did, however, precede an era which heavily discussed and dissected capitalism and socialism. As the 1900s progressed, Upton Sinclair would have seen a rise in opposition to his beliefs with the Red Scare and the publishing of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Winship, 2014). In our time, term “socialist” is now commonly used as slander against a supposedly overly liberal politician, and capitalism is a staple in American patriotism (Wing, 2012). Admittedly, our society has developed laws that prevent the tragedy that Jurgis Rudkus experienced from occurring, but our society is far from economically ideal. When half of American households hold only one percent of the country’s wealth, it is difficult to not wonder if Sinclair’s forewarning should have been more thoroughly examined (Froomkin,
Doctor John Parker Hammond is Scottish venture capitalist who develops a park on an island where dinosaurs can be brought back to life, through the miracles of science. He does this for the entertainment, and profit, of the people. However, the dinosaurs escape to bring terror upon those on the island, themselves, and the island itself. It is made very clear from the first scene that Jurassic Park is a commentary on global market capitalism. It both drives the story and its central complication.
A muckraking novel about the Chicago meatpacking industry, The Jungle follows Jurgis Rudkus on his move to the big city of beautiful America. Or so he thought. As a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis has less opportunities to be successful in such a thriving business. He begins his journey in a comparably easier job than some men can achieve, sweeping the fallen remains of animals into a room where they are thrown in with the rest of the “healthy” meat. When Jurgis loses this job after an injury, he finds work at the only place left hiring: the fertilizer mills. The stench of him is incapable of removal until he takes his first bath in a stream—only after leaving Chicago. Jurgis leaves Chicago to travel the countryside in search of food and pay.
These two books give stark reality to the readers of the impoverishment of the American working class as well as the corruption of industry, big business, and even capitalism itself. While their writing styles and subject matter are inherently different, the themes of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath are ultimately the same. In this essay I will examine and compare the social, political, and spiritual elements within these novels and how they relate to this class.
This novel depicts greed on several occasions through out the novel. One example of this is when Gatsby is left twenty five thousand dollars by Dan Cody as a legacy, but from what one is led to believe Ella Kaye refused to let
Focusing mainly on urban sharecropping in sweatshops in Jew town and cigar making factories, the people there were forced to work for low wages in poor conditions, in their homes where their employer was also their landlord. Riis describes this activity in the form of “slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the south.” In conditions such as these it is hard for the poor to ever make anything of themselves and overcome their disadvantages. Riis even goes further and compares the landlords of tenements to The Czar of all Russia. He points the finger at them metaphorically comparing the situation to a color line where “The landlord does the drawing, does it with an absence of pretense, a frankness of despotism that is nothing if not
The monkeys in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book are a very unique group of characters. They are viewed by the other animals of the jungle, or the Jungle People as they call themselves, as outcasts and outlaws. The most prominent chapter they occur in, “Kaa’s Hunting”, shows their lawless, shiftless, and uncivilized way of life. This image in itself does not give off any racist undertones.
Thus although Jurgis underwent all the toil and hardship, perhaps his son would live a better life because of it. This dream is shared by many during the Gilded Age. When they first arrive, only the adults seek employment, reasoning that their kids should get an education and improve their socioeconomic status; however, after only a short time, Jurgis insists that Stanislovas get a job to help support the family. This represents the fact that generation and generation will continue to perpecuate the inescapable cycle of poverty. One’s children will be immersed into the system of wage-slavery and so will the children’s children and so