The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

In 1906, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair was published and it created public outrage. Its depiction of working-class poverty, terrible working conditions, and unsanitary health conditions opened a window to the despondent world of the rising industrialized agriculture and food systems. Flash forward more than one hundred years, we are still seeing these same issues at a much larger scale around the globe. Moreover, these issues have evolved into new, more pressing problems that greatly affect the well-being of the Earth’s growing population in unimaginable ways. These industrialized systems have gained momentum over the last couple of decades, becoming an unprecedented multi-national, multi-billion dollar companies. Even though improvement has been vast, there still seems to be various plaguing issues surrounding this particular aspect of the Industrial Revolution. Some of those issues relate to the negative effects on the environment; food production and health; known cases of animal cruelty; and harsh working conditions. All in all, the adverse effects of the industrialized agricultural and food systems do not outweigh the limited benefits.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written to expose the brutality faced by the workers in the meatpacking industry. Sinclair wanted to show people what was really going on in the factory because few people were informed about these companies work conditions. He wanted to show the public that meat was “ diseased, rotten, and contaminated” (Willie).” This revelation shocked the, public which later led to the creation of the federal laws on food and safety. Sinclair strongly shows the failure of capitalism in the meatpacking industry which he viewed as inhumane, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent (Willie).”

A muckraker is a person who exposes the truth about businesses and the government. These are known today as whistle blowers. Upton Sinclair was the King of muckraking. During the Progessive movement, the United States was going through a time of progressive meat production and packaging. Upton Sinclair wrote a novel named “The Jungle” that revealed what really happens in the meat producing industry. This was only one of one hundred pieces written by Sinclair.

Jurgis always struggled with money even when Ona was on the verge of dying. Jurgis finally convinced the women but Ona didn’t make it on time because it was too late already. Upton Sinclair shows you the struggle Jurgis went through with money and it wasn’t a fair life for him. When Jurgis lost both Ona and his son Antanas he was begging and a drunk man gave him a 100 dollar bill, that next day he enters a bar to receive change but the bartender tells him he has to buy a drink first, once he does the bartender only gives him 97 cents and refuses to give him his change. Jurgis then gets in a fist fight with him but then is sent to Jail. Once he was a prison he realized the life of crime was the best way to survive as an immigrant, then Jurgis finally loses his hope of getting that American dream he always wanted. Jurgis had a good reason to feel like this because he kept getting turned down by jobs and had nowhere to stay, he was homeless.

In the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair there are many ways that different literary elements are used to explore a political or social issue. One main issue has to do with the meat packing industry and how the workers are treated. In the novel, the main character had moved to America to find work and live the American Dream but his time in America was anything but a dream. Upton Sinclair uses many literary elements in his work to show imagery, metaphors/ similes and personification all why relating to the social issue of the packing industry.

He is apart from his family, humiliated in front of his cellmates, and then is made to attend trial. After a Christmas apart from family he is sentenced to another thirty days in prison. With his family out of work, Jurgis unable to provide without working, and further hardships the family is evicted from their rented home. At the boarding house they have been relegated to, they experience more loss as Ona dies along with their second child.

labor in early industrial society and how the government supports for big business in American society. In history class, we have learn that the Progressive era is the first major reform movement in the twenty-century. It is a movement of the urban working class who look for the government intervention to improve the lives and working conditions, especially immigrants.

Several years before and after the turn the turn of the twentieth century, America experienced a large influx of European immigration. These new citizens had come in search of the American dream of success, bolstered by promise of good fortune. Instead they found themselves beaten into failure by American industry. Upton Sinclair wanted to expose the cruelty and heartlessness endured by these ordinary workers. He chose to represent the industrial world through the meatpacking industry, where the rewards of progress were enjoyed only by the privileged, who exploited the powerless masses of workers. The Jungle is a novel and a work of investigative journalism; its primary purpose was to inform the general public about the dehumanization

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.

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.

For centuries immigrants have left their homes and have journeyed to the United States in pursuit to live out the “American Dream”, an idea that the U.S. will provide people with a better life. However, this “better life” was not just given upon arrival, immigrants were not told the horrid experiences, and backbreaking hour, they would face in search for a better life. There is no better representation of this than Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, this book is a very accurate representation of the life of the vast majority of people within the United States. During the time when this book was written there were few jobs, and the jobs that were obtainable were mostly factory jobs with horrible conditions that entailed excruciating hours. Aside from the dangerous conditions, the pay was next to nothing making it near impossible to afford food and shelter, let alone providing for a family. Immigrants quickly found out that the “American Dream” was not the glorified vision that they thought, rather more like the song “Welcome to the Jungle” by “Guns N Roses”. After examining the lyrics, you can tell the similarities Axl Rose and the rest of Guns N Roses were facing as they tried to make it in the music industry. “In the jungle, welcome to jungle, watch it bring you to your knees, I wanna watch you bleed,” once you get to the U.S. you’ll get ripped down to almost nothing and suffer from the horrible conditions that you are faced with. The Jungle takes all of the issues immigrants

The book that I read for the assignment three is called The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair. The jungle is a Fiction book that is based on the meat packing industry in Chicago in early 20th century.

Not only did the family stumble upon difficulties in their workplaces, but in basic living conditions as well. Jurgis and his family witnessed such atrocities, as baby Antanas tragically drowning in the unpaved roads, devastating financial loss through misinformation concerning the purchase and custody of their house, and unsanitary meat packed and sold for regular consumption.

Upton Sinclair, an American writer and reformer, was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. Both of Sinclair’s parents came from prominent families, but Sinclair grew up impoverished because of an alcoholic father. Throughout his childhood, Sinclair lived in conditions that varied from slums to country homes but sometimes his father would spend all the family’s money on alcohol forcing Sinclair and his mother to live with his mother’s wealthy sister in order to survive (Wiedman, 2009). This allowed Sinclair to see how each side, well-to-do and poor, lived. While attending City College of New York, at the ripe old age of fourteen, Sinclair became a “hack” writer for popular magazines which he wrote under the pen names (Richard Wasowski, 2001) “Ensign Clark Fitch, USN and Lieutenant Fredrick Garrison, USA” (Wiedman, 2009). Sinclair would go on to have published around ninety books throughout his literary career (Richard Wasowski, 2001). Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, a 1906 novel in which he is most remembered for, sold 150,000 copies in the United States and was translated into seventeen languages (Karsner, 1968). Sinclair began his graduate program at Columbia University but in 1900, he left to write a poetic novel titled, “Springtime and Harvest”. In 1904 Fred D. Warren, editor of Appeal to Reason, a freelance, weekly socialist newspaper, hired Sinclair to write about the conditions of the Chicago stockyards (Richard Wasowski, 2001). For seven

Living in the bottom of the class system, capitalism takes a toll on Jurgis and his family. His