Brief Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland, where his family had once belonged to the southern upper class but, at Sinclair’s birth, the family floated near poverty. Sinclair graduated from high school early and enrolled in the City College of New York at the age of fourteen, during his college years, Sinclair encountered socialist philosophy, and became an avid supporter of the Socialist Party. Sinclair published five books, he spent weeks in the city’s meatpacking plants, learning everything about the work itself, the lives of workers, and the business. The Jungle a biography, was then brought up from this research the first few publishers whom Sinclair approached told him that his book was too terrible, and so
he financed the book himself. The books success satisfied Sinclair’s financial concerns but not his political motivations for writing it. During the Great Depression, Sinclair organized the End Poverty in California movement. In 1934, he ran as a democrat in an unsuccessful campaign to become California’s governor. The audience of the story The Jungle I think would be the general public because of him being there and trying to inform other people and government officials about the conditions living there. People were living and working in horrible and unsanitary conditions and making the product and themselves incapable of performing at their best. The book was in the 20th century or early 1900s and research shows that it was published in 1906. From reading this book I believe that the thesis is strongly about informing the public about the labor movement, make people more aware of it and to help explain and show them why we need it.
Jurgis and Ona, have recently immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their wedding party at a bar in Chicago or Packingtown. The couple and other family members like Marjia, Ona’s, and Jonas the brother of Ona’s stepmother, Teta. They have come to Chicago for a better way of life, but Packingtown, is the center of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. After the wedding celebration, Jurgis and Ona notice that they are a couple hundred dollars short to the saloonkeeper. Jurgis feeling ashamed of having no money especially living in America, has great faith in the American Dream, promises that he will work hard and make money. The family ends up looking to buy a house and finds one and agrees to the terms, which ends up being a rip off, the house is in horrible condition and is badly maintained, and is full of hidden costs. As the family’s living expenses increase, Ona and some of the family children, are forced to look for jobs. Jobs in Packingtown are very hard working labor, conducted in unsafe conditions with no interest for employees. The immigrant community is soon to be stuffed with crime and corruption. Jurgis’s dad, Dede finds a job only after agreeing to pay another man a third of his wages for helping him obtain the job. But the job is too difficult for the old man, and it quickly kills him. The winter season is the most gruesome season, and even Jurgis is forced to work in an unheated slaughterhouse risking his life by going to work and has trouble seeing there. Worried about the conditions of his family members’ lives, Jurgis joins a union and begins to understand political corruption and bribery around Packingtown. Marija regains her job, but is fired when she complains about being cheated out of some of her pay. Ona is now pregnant, and her job has become very
difficult for her. Her supervisor, Miss Henderson, commands a prostitution ring, and most of the other girls at the factory are made to be prostitutes. Ona gives birth to a boy, whom they name Antanas, but is forced to return to work a couple days later. Jurgis sprains his ankle and is in bed for a couple months not working. Even though bad working conditions caused the accident, the factory cuts his pay while he recovers. Whenever he returns to work, the factory doesn’t want to give him his job back. After a long search for employment, Jurgis takes a job at the fertilizer plant, the worse place of all. And where he starts drinking to help deal with the pain he feeling. Ona is pregnant again, and one night, doesn’t come home from work, and Jurgis finds out that her boss, kept her after work and forced her to sleep with him. Jurgis attacks him and is arrested. After a one sided trial, Jurgis is sentenced to a month in prison where he meets Jack and become friends. When he is released, Jurgis finds that his family has been evicted from its home and is living at the run-down boardinghouse in which they first stayed when they arrived in Chicago. When he goes in the boardinghouse, he finds Ona yelling; she is prematurely in labor, and the effort of giving birth kills her and the child. In woe, Jurgis disappears and drinks. As soon as he starts to feel better of himself and about life, Antanas drowns in the mud-logged street. Jurgis abandons his family and wanders the countryside as a tramp. Jurgis returns to Chicago, where he works digging freight tunnels. After hurting himself he is then out of a work and becomes a beggar, where a wealthy man on one night gives him a hundred dollars, but when Jurgis asks a bartender to change him, he gives him only ninety five cents, Jurgis attacks him and is again sent to jail. In prison, he meets Jack again. When the two men are released, Jurgis and Jack partner up, and the two commit crimes. Jurgis is recruited to work for the corrupt political boss, Mike Scully. When strikes hits Packingtown, Jurgis crosses the picket lines, undermining the efforts of the union but making money as an edge. He finds out about his family and how they are surviving and have become prostitutes so Marjia can support the family. One night, Jurgis wanders into a socialist political rally, in which a preacher gives a speech that inspiration to Jurgis, he then joins the socialist party and holds it’s ideal that workers should own factories and plants. And by trying to tell people to turn to socialism.
Reading this book, I wouldn’t say that my opinion has changed about the hard times people were living here in America, but by reading it I do tend to understand it more and how people did what they could to survive for their family. I can say that I sort of relate to this story just because my family is from Romania and my father came here before I was born in the 1980s just so he could escape communism and make a better way of life here in America. I felt that the book did take a while to get into it but especially towards the beginning but it ended up being okay. It is sort of hard to explain the relationship of how it can relate to me, but I can understand like the traditions and customs they tried to stick with, learning a new language and new life. But, Upton Sinclair does give pretty good information on how it happened and thank God that we don’t have these conditions today in this lifetime. How also strikes would form and unions as well, and how that time people turned to socialism a new thing, so it took a while but I guess he did prove his thesis in the end. Upton Sinclair’s attitude toward the story is the victimized working class is decent, and the cast down capitalists are evil, Upton Sinclair’s stand is like character.