Review Of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

Kaylie Lewis
APUSH
Turning Points in American history
3rd 1-4-16

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Cambridge, MA: R. Bentley, 1971. Print.

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
or only book. Throughout his lifetime Upton Sinclair wrote nearly 100 books and he has also won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Not to mention, he was nominated for congress by the socialist party (which plays quite a big role in his book) and was a democratic candidate for governor of California. Jurgis Rudkus and his soon to be wife Ona Lukoszaite move their entire family of twelve from their home town of Lithuania to Chicago in an area called Packingtown (The meatpacking district). They arrive there with hopes and dreams of a better life but, as we know, life isn’t always what it’s made out to be in America. They family members who are able to work find odd-and-end jobs in meatpacking plants trimming or packaging meat. However, this family stumbles upon the worst possible luck you could imagine. Every Time things begin to look up for them something happens to drag them back down. Factories shut down, Jurgis is injured, his father dies, Ona is raped by her boss, she becomes really sick and both her and her unborn die, the family is evicted, Jurgis’ son drowns in a puddle. The family falls apart and so does Jurgis after all the tragedy he has suffered, he becomes a drunkard, a beggar, and a criminal out on the streets. Until, one day he is introduced to the socialist party. He now has something to believe in and has a new hope for his future and the future of mankind. Upton Sinclair wrote this book because he wanted to give a real life example of the tragic conditions faced by immigrants and factory workers.
Immigrants coming to America from their home countries are often misled and disappointed by what they come to find in America versus what they expected. There is a lot of hatred and prejudice towards immigrants leaving them a limited number of jobs t o choose from, and often not the best paying ones either. Starting out with this disadvantage adds even more obstacles to an already difficult task of making a life for yourself.“Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave-drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery” (The Jungle, 113), this quote is a great example from the book on how the author feels about immigrant labor practices. Sinclair uses the misfortunes of the immigrants and the factory workers as a way to exaggerate the conditions and get the point across to the reader. The author is trying to prove that the treatment these workers receive is completely unfair and immoral. “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. ...And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot -- the law was against them, the whole machinery of society was at their oppressors' command!” (The Jungle, 184-185). The thesis of “The Jungle” is

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