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Critical Analysis of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Literary analysis on the jungle by upton sinclair
Critical Analysis of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
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Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” and the Pure Food and Drug Act
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
conditions of a Lithuanian family that moved to the US, and had to work, live, and die for the food companies in Chicago. “The Jungle” spurred a movement in the American
people to do something about the problems facing the American food supply. Because of
the growing concern about the quality of food in America the government took action to
prevent further problems. Thus the Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed to fix the
problems. The Food and Drug Act was a true example of how the people of our nation
influenced the government to take action, to solve a growing problem effecting the
American people.
“The Jungle” talks about a couple who move to an area of Chicago, “known as Packtown,” from Lithuania. Packtown is the center of Chicago’s meat packing industry. It
is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is difficult to find a job. Some relatives of the couple and themselves get a house, but find out it is a swindle.
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.
Jurgis disappears on a drinking binge. With the help of a wealthy woman who takes and
interest in the family, Jurgis finds a job at a steel mill. He is renewed in hope dedicating himself to Antanas, “his ...
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...lightly to violating its new laws.
From respectable authorities on the subject, and the 1906 Food and Drugs Act itself, gave paticual understanding of the events effecting that time period, a understanding of certain points in the novel “The Jungle”, and how the government went about solving the nation’s going problem, has lead myself to agree that Upton Sinclairs’s
“The Jungle” had a major role in moving the government to clean up the food supply.
Which by the approval of the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, the government succeeded in
solving the problem. “The Jungle” showed to the nation the scam of biblical antiquity,
that was effecting there very lives. It rallied the people to make the government find a
solution to prevent further sicknesses and deaths because of greedy capitalists. The
government set forth the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 in response which regulated and
examined products developed by food and drug companies. Upton Sinclair provided the
motive, and the government supplied the solution. Because of the these two forces we, in
our day in time, can rest assured that our food and drugs are of the very top quality, and purity for human consumption.
However, that was not the case. When The Jungle was presented to the public, readers were astonished by the disgusting and unsanitary state in which the meat was being processed in. The community was more concerned with the meat conditions than they were with the horrific conditions the workers were faced with. So while the popularity of Sinclair’s work was not his original intentions, it still accomplished stages of reform. It can be assumed that Roosevelts initial reluctance to accept Sinclair’s novel was in part, directly connected to his disbelief that the Federal government had become so disconnected and oblivious to American industry and the complete lack of Federal oversight. This “disconnect” did not last long as The Pure Food and Drug Act, as well as, the Meat Inspection Act were both directly set in to place mere months after Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle was published. This type of reform supported progressive philosophy by preventing corporate owners from remaining above government regulation and started a trend in the way government regulators began to deal with corporate monopolies and trusts. The Jungle, along with other “muckrakers” began a series of Federal oversight reforms and regulatory guidance that soon began to take hold in other industries. Big industry would soon realize that they were not above the
members of his family begin to die off and or left him till around chapter 27, Jurgis is without a
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.
These were only some of many examples in The Jungle about deceit and corruption exhibited in the meat packing industry. Nonetheless, plants had government inspectors to check for tubercular animals, but Sinclair explains that these inspectors were usually the kind of people who would be easily distracted by those passing, and would not regret missing dozens of other animals. Therefore, people’s faith in those government inspectors had been betrayed, and their health needs were relentlessly ignored. However, Sinclair’s exposing of the scheming meat packing industry increased the awareness of such practices occurring daily.
In 1906, socialist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book he hoped would awaken the American people to the deplorable conditions of workers in the meat packing industry. Instead, the book sent the country reeling with its description of filthy, rat infested plants, suspect meats processed and sold to consumers, and corrupt government inspectors. President Roosevelt became seriously concerned by the charges brought forth by Mr. Sinclair and determined the only way to protect consumers from unscrupulous business and unsafe food was to enforce regulation.
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.
2Volume 24, Number 1. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry [Internet]. Los Angeles, CA (USA): CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOUNDATION; (fall) 2008 [cited 2014 Feb 16]. Available from: http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-the-meat-packing-industry.html
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
"Regulatory Information." Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 20 May 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
One the key pieces of legislation that was a prime example of the progressive era, was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This law came about due to muckraking, and also because of public and political interests. Muckraking, such as Upton Sinclair’s piece, “The Jungle”, helped in the timing of the adoption of this legislature. This piece of legislature, allowed for the regulation of processed food items in United States food markets. The Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Department of Agriculture under the Bureau of Chemistry (Law, 2004).
In the beginning of the 1900’s, the country made dramatic changes toward progressivism in domestic issues. These changes were first made by President Theodore Roosevelt, who signed the Pure Foods and Drug Act of 1906. This bill was made, “For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.” This would help bring progressive change to many manufacturing industries that were newly developed in the late nineteenth century. These jobs were dangerous to an equal and fair way of living for the American working class and were resolved by this act.
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.
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.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
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.