What kind of family would want to leave behind everything, and move to a strange far away city, that they almost know nothing about? Now just hold on a second, it might seem cool to move to a new exciting place, but that’s not the case for the Rudkus household. To them, Jurgis, Ona, and Marija, it was indeed exciting moving to Chicago in the late 1800’s, to have a chance to. They soon find out that Chicago is making things hard to make a better living, than back in Lithuania were they used to live. Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, describes how alcoholism, poverty, and people in positions of authority had a negative impact on the lives of immigrants.…
The beginning of ‘The Jungle by Upton Sinclair starts with the wedding of Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus who are immigrants that arrived in Chicago from Lithuania. Their wedding takes place in an area of Chicago called Packingtown due to it being the center of the meat packing industry. During the celebration the guest are supposed to drop money into a hat to help pay for the wedding. But most guest dropout of the party without contributing any money and the newlyweds are unable to pay the bill. This is when Jurgis promises that he will find a job in this new land to make money to support their new lives. In the following chapter the author talks about the family past of Jurgis and Ona and how before they came to America they did not have…
Upton Sinclair had a very successful life which gave him many qualifications for all the books he has written. When he first thought of the idea for “The Jungle” he decided that he should go undercover for seven weeks inside of an actual meatpacking plant in Chicago, in order to get all the information he would need to accurately write his novel. He was also well educated by many different schools. He went to the City College of New York at the young age of fourteen and after graduating from there he went and studied for a while at Columbia University back in 1897. “The Jungle” was also, by far not his first…
There are many corruptions during late 19th century to early 20th centuries, such as political corruption, law corruption, social corruption and economic corruption. In this book, Sinclair uses one event to show the law corruption and economic corruption. When Jurgis finds out One was raped by her boss, Connor, he was extremely angry so he beats Connor. In the court, the judge only listens to what Connor said and he doesn’t care about Jurgis’s explanation (97). As a result, Jurgis needs to stay in jail for thirty days, but Connor doesn’t get any punishment at all even though his sin is more serious than Jurgis. Both of Jurgis and Connor are guilty, but the law doesn’t apply to upper-class people. Sinclair uses this event to show us the legal…
The title of this book is called The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The length of this book is thirty-six chapters, the uncensored edition marking it three hundred and thirty-five pages long. Originally published on February 26,1906, the uncensored issue was published in 2003 over eighty years later. This book was about a young man and women have migrated from Lithuania to Chicago in search for a better life. They soon learn that in Packingtown, the center of Lithuania has no jobs available and the conditions are rough. In the process of their wedding arrangements Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite they come to an understanding that they are in more than hundred dollars in debt to the saloonkeeper. Everyone ends up having to look for a job because…
Throughout Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, Jurgis Rudkus descends into an abyss of poverty as he journeys through the industrialized urban jungle known as Packingtown. Allowing a family of Lithuanian immigrants to be his farmhands, Upton Sinclair plants the seeds of socialism into readers’ minds, hoping for a prosperous season. Jurgis’s journey through the depths of American Capitalism tarnish his soul, leaving him a mere shell of his former self. The slow annihilation of Jurgis’s family at the hands of a cruel and prejudiced economic social system demonstrates the effect of Capitalism on the working class as a whole. Sinclair flawlessly presents Socialism as a new religion, portraying Jurgis as a Christ figure set out in Packington to baptize…
The historical fiction book, The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is about the fictional character Jurgis Rudkus. Jurgis lives in Chicago in the early 1900’s. He had moved to America from Lithonia in search of a better life. “Jurgis could see all the truth now-could see himself through the whole long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured him, mocking him, meantime jeering in his face” (Sinclair 177). Since moving to Chicago, life was anything but easy for Jurgis and his family. The Movie Cinderella Man is about the real life boxer James Braddock. The movie takes place in New York and New Jersey, during The Great Depression. Beginning in 1929 before…
Workers and citizens today have Upton Sinclair to thank for the improved working conditions and higher regulations in the food industry. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair uses vivid imagery and figurative language to expose the extremely unpleasant working conditions of immigrants and the Capitalist ideology of early 1900’s Chicago . A large Lithuanian family comes to Chicago in hopes for better life and work. The main character Jurgis is eager to work after a new marriage with his wife, Ona. The family of twelve quickly realizes that things are not quite what they seem. They are struck with hunger, poverty, injury, and death on multiple occasions.…
In The Jungle , Upton Sinclair shows The corruption of the Industrial Age through his depiction of working conditions, wages, and living conditions.…
Many works of literature deals with political issues or social issues. One such work of literature is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. The author uses symbolism and motifs to show the overarching theme of his book, the evils of capitalism. The author writes about corruption time and time again as a tool used by the powerful in a capitalistic society. As Jurgis and his family continue to live in Packingtown, believing they can be part of the realization American Dream, they find themselves slipping deeper into the corruption and immorality surrounding them. Jurgis, and through his eyes the viewer, witnesses the packaging of tuberculosis ridden beef, the overworking and death of many of Jurgis's family, and even the rape of Jurgis's wife at the hands…
The book The Jungle was introduced as a novel by Upton Sinclair was financed and published with his own money. Upton Sinclair was a famous novelist and social crusader from California. He was born on 20 September 1878 in Baltimore Md. He was the only child of Priscilla Harden and Upton Beall Sinclair. Upton Sinclair’s childhood was lived in poverty, one where his father was an alcoholic, his job as an alcohol salesman most likely contributed to his disease. And although his own family was extremely poor, he spent periods of time living with his wealthy grandparents. By living from one end of the extreme to the other he argued that this is what turned him into a socialist.1…
America has always been the country of opportunity and new beginnings. It is a place to start a fresh and better life for immigrants (at least that’s what they think). In Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis wants to better his and several members of his family’s lives. He does this by packing up and traveling to America, but he is unaware of the downfalls in his future. The family members who came along with Jurgis are Ona, his soon to be wife, Jurgis’ father Antanas, Ona’s stepmother Elzbieta, her three kids, and her brother Jonas.…
The young man was known as Upton Sinclair and traveled to Chicago to write about the life of the working class. Sinclair attacked the working conditions of the meat packing industry with newspaper articles but the situation was left unnoticed until a copy of a Sinclair’s publication was sent to President Roosevelt. “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair, contained reports of the unsanitary conditions and the horrible images he had witnessed during seven weeks of observing Chicago’s meat packing houses. Sinclair got the attention of the nation, especially with reports that included a section of how meat packing houses treated diseased meat. The report stated that the smell of diseased meat was masked by applying kerosene in order to pass the current standards before reaching the public. The report became a much bigger issue then Sinclair claimed that such meat did in fact reach the public killing more American soldiers than the Spanish-American war. This was a time of muckrakers and Sinclair was considered one of them, having a huge influence on investigations of corrupt industries and exposing to America harmful meat products, thus resulting in new government regulations and laws. Sinclair’s reports and horrible descriptions of filth and blood also influenced a decrease of almost half…
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 of “survival of the fittest” and the poor members of society were almost disregarded and not treated as human beings. Sinclair gives a descriptive account as to the moral dilemmas that the stockyard industry enforced on the immigrants, who were forced to assimilate into a capitalist society. In the event that the social service programs, institutions, laws that are available today were present in the early 1900’s, immigrants would not have suffered the degree of destitution and helplessness as depicted in the Jungle.…
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair has a plot like no other; the book is unique and teaches many how The Jungle got its name. The Jungle is a story on how two “soon to be” newlyweds and their families move to Chicago to seek opportunity at a new and better life than what they had in Lithuania. The main character Jurgis embarks on the journey to find a job to support his family while every man and their…