The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Fame for the Wrong Reason Essay

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).”

Upton Sinclair published his novel, The Jungle, in 1906 using elements of naturalistic fiction, with the idea that ordinary people cannot overcome the system, to convey his political agenda. He did this by writing about a fictional family that comes to Chicago from Lithuania with the promise of guaranteed work where they “might earn three roubles a day” and be “rich m[en] in the bargain” (Sinclair 24-25). He used the meatpacking industry to show the extreme affects a large scale industry can have on an individual and on a family and to draw sympathy from the reader for typical families in capitalist America, choosing to focus on the immigrant experience. The Jungle, however, not only describes the horrific working conditions and the failures

Since the industrial revolution, our country has made tremendous strides to ensure Equal Employment Opportunity and safe work environments. Horror stories of unfair treatment and unsafe work environments are portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”. Factory working conditions are portrayed as men, women, and child work long hours in unsafe conditions with no worker rights whatsoever (Sinclair, 2011). As workers died in the factory or were injured, another warm body was placed in their position (Sinclair, 2011). Wages were almost nonexistent (Sinclair, 2011). It is because of unsafe working environments, low wages, long hours, etc. that the government decided to intervene and create various regulatory groups. As we

This book shows the horrific working conditions and unsanitary conditions in Chicago's meatpacking industry. Sinclair's descriptions of conditions and procedures in the meatpacking plant led to subsequent reforms in food safety regulation. From the killing beds to the fertilizer plant, the meatpacking plant is not a place one would like to work at, it is a place of blistering cold and burning heat, a place where a man might accidentally fall and end up in the canned food. Sinclair uses descriptions of food and diseased meat to reveal the disregard capitalist owners have for the safety of American citizens. He also portrays the grotesque physical harm done to workers, who lose fingers, cut themselves and get blood poisoning, have their skin eroded by low pH acid, and lose limbs. Sinclair uses the industrialized brutality of the animals to symbolize the ultimate pain and discomfort the workers are

In its most general sense, Socialism seeks the co-prosperity and common cause of all people, which could be accomplished without force in religious and utopian communities” (Socialism). The Socialist movement was Sinclair’s motivation to write and to pursue equality for all classes. Socialism needed the proper industrial environment to flourish. Chicago was home to the stockyards district, known as Packingtown, where many immigrants came to follow the “American Dream” and where they were subsequently exploited. Sinclair toured Packingtown and discovered different hardships that the immigrants and their families endured. The Jungle was popular and evoked a passionate response towards filthy food preparation (Costly). Sinclair set out to depict the vile working conditions in Packingtown while advocating for

The working environment in slaughterhouses and meat packing factories were atrocious. According to Sinclair in The Jungle, the workers in these factories were to pickle or smoke spoiled meat and cut off the contaminated parts. The meat that had been dropped was picked up and put back in the grinder as if nothing happened at all. If a whole ham is spoiled to the point it smelled the workers were to chop it up with other meats and pour chemicals to smother the pungent odor oozing off the meat. Rats overrun storage rooms where the meat is kept in piles under insufficient, leaky ceilings. The factories have workers mop up the brine, that is used to preserve the meat, towards a hole in the floor so it can be recycled and used again. After a few days, workers were to shovel the unused rotten scraps into the truck that hauled off the meat.

There were no toilets, so human and rat excrement wound up in the meat, along with the rats themselves. These unsanitary details moved readers far more than the injustices inflicted on the workers. Other examples include the rechurning of rancid butter, the cutting of ice from polluted water and the doctoring of milk with formaldehyde. The average consumer was shocked to know that the “pure beef” was in fact contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Imagine

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.

During the late 1800s rat droppings, assortments of putrid items,and chemicals were found in meats like, hams, sausages, and cans of meat. A man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of dried dung of rats. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who wrote, “The Jungle”, which exposes the

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 Jungle is a novel that focuses on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. The novel was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into the Chicago stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. However, the details of the story ended up launching a government investigation of the meat packing plants, and ultimately regulation of food products. It gave an informative view of what life was like in America at the time. Important topics like immigration, working conditions and sanitation issues of the time were all addressed well in the novel.

Upton Sinclair took interest in fiction at an early age by writing fiction stories as a young boy to writing adventure stories and jokes to help support himself through college. He was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943 and focused on writing fiction stories about real world industrialist views. Upton Sinclair’s fiction “The Jungle” entwines the reality of the dangerous and legal conditions of meat industry workers and consumers in Chicago while narrating the lower-class lifestyle of an immigrant family relocating from a small town in Europe to America in search for a better living. During their hardship and unsuccessful process of finding this “better” lifestyle, the horrors and unsafe conditions of the meat packing industry are legitimately exposed. Back in that time, the occupation of factory working or the meat packing industry was popularly considered the source of family income. From young to old, these men, women, boys and girls were under paid and worked in terrible and unsafe conditions. Sinclair also focused on factors that women went through for employment. Many people felt as if Sinclair was fond of exaggeration while writing this book but the most important thing is that this book imposed change in America.

The novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair depicts the lives of poor immigrants in the United States during the early 1900’s. Sinclair is extremely effective in this novel at identifying and expressing the perils and social concerns of immigrants during this era. The turmoil that immigrants faced was contingent on societal values during the era. There was a Social Darwinist sentiment

     At the beginning of the twentieth century, a massive wave of immigrants from the southern and eastern parts of Europe came to America in search of economic opportunities. They carried to America all the dreams and hopes of wealth. When finally reaching America, these naive immigrants faced a new struggle and learned the harsh reality of America. In Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, he describes the life of an immigrant family from Lithuania that venture off to America in search of a better life. After their arrival and stay, they struggle to keep alive and barely meek their way through life. Sinclair’s style of describing the characters, conflicts, and ideas illustrates the struggle and heartache of