Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: Analysis

Antonio Heredia
Mr.Schramn
American Literature
4 February 2015 “There is no ‘I’ in team.” Many of us have heard this saying before whether it is in the sports world, in school, at work, or maybe even at home. The lesson taught is to show teamwork and care for the benefit of one’s teammates. Ideally this lesson will work out, though in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle the saying is proved to false. Taking place in a capitalist society, the novel depicts the polar treatment of individuals during this time. The wealthy few would benefit from the hard and dangerous work of the poor many; while the wealthy would also suppress the working conditions and the multitude of the poor themselves. Jurgis represents the working class of America at the time,
and his many jobs and difficulties represent Capitalism’s negative impact of the many of the United States. Capitalism is almost equivalent to death for Jurgis. Not only do many relationships and family members themselves die from the effects of Capitalism, but Jurgis himself “dies” in the sense that all his values and his former self are gone. Capitalism presents many difficulties for Jurgis and his family, many of which are so powerful that they cause Jurgis to change into a completely different individual; while also causing everyone in society to change along by the same cause. “Men are not essentially evil, but within capitalism immoral behavior is systematically rewarded” (Wiener 65) Throughout the course of the novel, Capitalism provides multiple conflicts to immigrant workers like Jurgis working in the industrial economy, one of these conflicts being the mistreatment of workers. Upton Sinclair graphically depicts the conditions inside the meat packing factory which Jurgis initially works at. The factory itself is dirty, unsanitary, a safety hazard, and produces constant gruesome sounds of suffering animals. “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble o lift out a rat even when he saw one; there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waster barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast.” (Sinclair 112) The workers were obligated to work under these gruesome conditions, having to sacrifice their health and bodies only to earn meager wages to at least try and feed their family. “Workers in the pickle room contract infections, and have their fingers eaten away by acids; butchers and can makers cut their hands up, while stampers’ hands simply get chopped off, workers in the cooking rooms fall into huge cooking vats.” (Morris 141) These unfair and dangerous conditions which workers were made to work are a conflict Capitalism represents towards American working class, and essentially represents Capitalism as a whole. The workers have to endure these conditions for the benefit of the business owners being able to make greater capital out of it. The conditions of the workplace cause Jurgis and his family to have to endure many difficulties and make life altering decisions.
While working at the meat packing industry Jurgis sprained his ankle and was put on bed rest for three months. Having Jurgis on bed rest the family was stripped from one of their primary incomes. This being the case, everyone had to seek employment even the younger members of the family and a pregnant Ona. The employment which they were able to find paid them minimal amounts and caused the family to barely scrap by until Jurgis was cleared to go back to work. “… wages from 15 cents an hour for new unskilled hands to 50 cents an hour for the highly skilled” (Weiner 80) Even as Jurgis was able to go back to work, his employer had already dropped him as Jurgis was made to settle for a job which paid less. At this point Jurgis’s brother in law was sick of the situation and decided to leave the family and break a traditional family value, the first Rudkus to fall to Capitalism. All this time Ona has been working during her pregnancy. The simple fact that she is working is bad enough, but additionally her employer one day raped her after her shift was done. This causes Jurgis to physically assault the employer and Jurgis ends up going to jail. All this because the employer had the “right” in the conflict and sent Jurgis to jail. While serving Jurgis was serving his term in Jail, Ona had difficulties in delivering her baby and ended up dying, yet
another Rudkus succumbing to Capitalism. The conditions also affected the Jurgis in their family lives by the fact that they no longer wished to expand the family, as in having any more children, since it was only viewed as a deficit. Capitalism made it seem as though children and family was just an investment and no longer a tradition or something beautiful. “The narrative’s implicit fear of a world swarming with disreputable life and sense of being entrapped by it eventually coalesces into a fear of family life, and, within the confines of the family, misogynistic fears of the suffering in the novel.” (Derrick 127) The protagonist of the novel, Jurgis Rudkus, is undoubtedly the one who undergoes the greatest transformation during the course of the story.
Jurgis is in a constant battle against Capitalism, which untimely concludes in Jurgis “winning” only by him giving up all his beliefs and traditions. At the start of the novel Jurgis has a mindset that hard work will get him out of complications and get him to prosper in the new land, in other words, Jurgis has faith in the American Dream. When Ona was worried as to how they were going to pay off the debt brought upon them by their wedding a young Jurgis said, “I will work harder” (Sinclair 18) Though as the course of the story went on Jurgis abandoned this thought, even ending up being a beggar on the streets and not working at all. And the drive to work hard to alleviate his family of any debt and issues with money was also completely abandoned. As soon as Jurgis would receive a pay check he would get himself into a bar to fuel his growing alcohol problem, having only a fraction of his pay actually go towards his family. As previously mentioned Jurgis goes through a gradual change as a result of multiple and constant attacks by Capitalism, even causing Jurgis to change his whole belief system. “The innocence of Jurgis’ delight in his work is soon undercut by all kinds of rude afflictions and disillusionments” (Folsom 28) As the story is set up to give the reader a sense that Lithuanian customs are extremely family oriented and
family comes before all, and to start Jurgis conquers with these traditions; doing things as letting Ona’s family come reside at their place and taking care of all of her family. Though as the story progresses Jurgis ends up losing all these customs. Jurgis actually goes to the extreme as to completely abandon his struggling family and also willingly getting into altercations three distinct times which sent him to jail. If reading the story and interpreting it through the changes which occur to Jurgis as a cause of Capitalism, one can almost split The Jungle into two parts: young Jurgis and industrial Jurgis. In the battle of working class America versus Capitalism change is inevitable. In The Jungle the Rudkus family as a whole endures many hardships and changes at the hands of Capitalism, specifically Jurgis. Even by going through deaths, injuries, personality transformations, and many other difficulties Jurgis is still able to survive in the Jungle. Indeed he transformed into a completely different character throughout the novel, one that is not very desirable, he was still able to come back at the end of the novel and find his liberation, Socialism. To Upton Sinclair this is the real message of the story, not to raise awareness as to the terrible working conditions of the employees but to allow the people to see how to combat Capitalism and that’s through Socialism. With Socialism the truly is no I in team.

Work Cited
Derrick, Scott. “What a Beating Feels like: Authorship, Dissolution and Masculinity in Sinclair’s The Jungle.” Studies in American Fiction. Northeastern U. 125-141.Print.
Folsom, Michael. “Upton Sinclair’s Escape from The Jungle: The Narrative Strategy and Suppressed Conclusion of America’s First Proletarian Novel.” Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies. Burt Franklin. 21-80. Print.
Morris, Matthew. “The Two Lives of Jurgis Radkus.” American Literary Realism. McFarland & Company. 120-154. Print.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Cambridge, Mass.:R. Bentley, 1971. Print.
Weiner, Gary. Workers’ Rights in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Detroit: Greenhaven/Gale, 2008. Print.