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Socialism And Capitalism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Decent Essays

Upton SInclair’s novel, The Jungle, is a novel based on the “Gilded Age” in american history. It is the life of a working man named Jurgis Rudkus and as the story progresses, it shows the corruption and dishonesty of the people during this time period, as well as their reasoning behind their actions. Also as the novel continued, it showed the author's inspiration for the title of this novel. Throughout the book, Upton Sinclair had scattered metaphors as to why Capitalism is corrupt and why Socialism is better. With subtle hints to social classes and how Jurgis progresses through them through corruption. Dishonesty, it seems to be single handedly the most common topic in the book with it reoccurring over and over again with the many of …show more content…

The Jungle what a strange name for a novel about a crooked government and contaminated meat factories with the rich having monopoly over all the city. See, the whole novel and even the title is an elaborate metaphor and as the novel progresses it becomes clear from where the inspiration for the title came from to see towards the finale of the story. It simply means that everyone is out for themselves and would, in a metaphorical sense, devour the weak and then leave them out to die. The book also has various different metaphors with the most descriptive and the one the stands out the most is one from the beginning of the book describing the cold in a way only a great author could do. It was a way that makes you understand that it was no joke , that they were terrified by the cold for if not careful it would cost them their lives. It describes the cold as a reaper of death as if they were barely slipping through its fingers every night and every day his grasp would tighten on their lives that were already on it's last leg. By putting in this way it makes this the biggest priority for them to survive another day in shambles. “Order of society”, this is in reference to how there are a few people who have monopoly over the whole city, and that the working men are just pawns in the whole charade. And the crooks are the power pieces in an elaborate game that belongs to the kings. Jurgis starts off as a pawn or a working

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