Upton Sinclair was born in Maryland in 1878. Was an American author who wrote more than 100 books. He was involved with socialism which encourage him to write about the meatpacking industries. Eventually he wrote a novel named the jungle resulted in the best-selling novel. When he was little he didn’t have an easy life. His one only child of a drunk man and strong willed mother. He was raised in poverty even though sometimes he was taken to his mother family which they were a wealthy family. When he was 10 his family moved to New York at the age of 14 he started going to college supported himself writing novel and routine. While he was in New York he developed an interest for moral and social justice. Many families around the world are always …show more content…
He never though he was going to get married, but in a horse festival he fell deeply in love with Ona. Jurgis is a hardworking man that enables him to find work with no problem while other are still standing in line he has found a job so easily. To celebrate Jokubas takes them to take a tour of Packingtown he takes them to the yard where there is a huge amount of cattle. Jokubas tells them all about them how are they weight, loaded on train then they are taken to the slaughterhouses, where they are killed and cut for food. The party continues and they end up in the meatpacking plant where they begin a tour of the factory. Jurgis has the idea of instead of renting a house they could buy one if everyone help a little. They could give a down payment and every month pays twelve dollars. When they finally decide that they will buy the house, the agent tries to sell them a house that it was not as advertised just that the agent could make profit. The family is really upset, when Jurgis gets home he is really furious he threatens to go out and killed the agent, but instead he find another lawyer that helps them. Now Jurgis is relieve he goes home and tell everyone of the good news and they are happy he didn’t kill the …show more content…
Even though prison is hard they still give him shelter food and clothing. They said the prison is better life than the outside. When he is released from prison he wanders the street of Chicago begging for food and money. He receives like two pennies every day he think that people are not going to care about his wellbeing society has their own live they are not going to bother about others. But one day he was face with a drunk guy that offered him to go with him at his house. Jurgis agreed upon arriving Jurgis could not believe such a huge house with a lot of expenses things. The man said that he own a meatpacking company. At the end of the story Jurgis conversion to socialism. The novel has a switch from narrative to
Chapters 22-26: Chapter 22 begins with Jurgis leaving the household without saying a word. He flees by train into the country and begins to learn how to get by. He begins to make a good amount of money, but he spends it all on alcohol and women. Jurgis has lost who he once was, and he can no longer push himself away from the temptations that he used to fight strongly against. He later gets another job, gets a good amount of money, and spends it on alcohol again.
At the end of the book, Jurgis wanders into a social rally, completely distraught, due to his emotional, and most likely physical, pain. The speech that he hears at this rally inspires him, leading him to join said party, to which it helps him get a job, allowing him to find one of his relatives, Teta
However, a man soon approaches him and offers him a job, but Antanas has to give him 1/3 of all of his wages. Tamoszius tells Jurgis that this practice is just a part of a deeper web that goes on in business. Soon Antanas and Jurgis are both working in the meat packing factories, and discover the truly disgusting practices of these establishments. Around the same time, the family learn that their house is a swindle and they are paying interest in addition to their monthly payment. Soon Ona and Stanislova get jobs, with Stanislova getting a job canning lard and Ona sewing cover on ham.
Jurgis is sanguine in the beginning of the book when he first arrives, but becomes extremely lugubrious after he loses almost his entire family indirectly to capitalism. These reasons help fortify Phelps’ argument because they help the reader “acquire a higher level of analytical skill” (Phelps 4) to be able to understand why all these events happen to just one
A muckraker was a popular term used in the Progressive Era in order to categorize people that were American journalists, and they attacked and wrote about corrupted companies. One of the most known muckrakers during this time period was Upton Sinclair. Upton Sinclair was a journalist who was a bright child, and he self-published many works, including the famous The Jungle, and caused changes in the meatpacking industry. Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878 to an alcoholic liquor salesman and a respectful, puritanical mother. As a child, Sinclair was exposed to dichotomies, which made him an intelligent individual throughout his life.
“The person I have become, who sits writing in this chair at this desk, has been forged by enormous struggle and unexpected blessings, despite the dehumanizing environment of a prison intended to destroy me” (5). Jimmy Santiago Baca managed to survive through life’s obstacles, becoming a better person in the end, a person he wouldn’t have been if he hadn 't fought for it. His life started off with a drunken father who would beat them, and soon after a mother who abandoned them. Him and his siblings grew up with their grandparents, hoping for their parents to return for them, until they were sent to an orphanage and eventually gave up hope. Overtime all the family had grown apart, only rarely did his siblings speak to him.
Jurgis gains a new perspective of everything around him and everything that has happened. The main character Jurgis Rudkus is an immigrant coming to America. He searches for a job to provide money for his wife and parents. In the article Schema Criticism by Mark Bracher, he emphasizes that, “Jurgis is the prototypical image of autonomy. He is powerful, exuberant, striking figure who towers above the other workers” (32).
The Choices We Make in Life Have you ever found it interesting to notice two people whose lives start out close to the same but end so differently? Jurgis is the main character in the book The Jungle. The book was written by Upton Sinclair and it portrays the horrors of factory life in the early twentieth century. Jurgis was an immigrant that came to America in hopes to achieve the American Dream, only to find himself cheated out of that dream by everyone around him.
Turns out his friend lied and he was actually poor and struggling too. So Jurgis traveled to America with his father,wife, his wife stepmother,her children, and his brother or cousin. I forgot if it was his brother or cousin. They all go to America with such big dreams and hopes but it all gets shut down when they get there. When they first get there they have to stay in a woman’s crowded house.
He is often compared to a wild, dumb beast, such as in the line: “he was pacing up and down his cell like a wild beast that breaks its teeth upon the bars of its cage” (Sinclair 154). Because Jurgis is described this way several times, it can be inferred that life in Chicago has brought Jurgis back to a primal state. This quote in particular indicates that although Jurgis is literally in a cell, or cage, he has been trapped figuratively as well. This is supported in the novel, and the main “trap” he faces is his family. Jurgis is also described as a “wounded buffalo” (112) and a “wounded bull” (147).
In fact, just as a tiger would, Jurgis “sunk his teeth into the man’s cheek; […] he was dripping with blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his mouth” (187). The use of these comparisons to animals creates a jungle like atmosphere for the reader within the capitalist urban environment which has an extremely unforgiving nature. In the urban jungle of Chicago that Sinclair writes about, the immigrant workers are the weaker animals fighting for survival in which the wealthy capitalist prey upon to build vast fortunes of
There are many other traps around America that deceive the immigrants because their weakness of not knowing English and the desire of getting a great life in America which lead them unpreparedly get fooled by the businessmen. These traps prevented the immigrants from leaving America, because of the significant amount of debt that they have to pay each month, which forced them to keep working and become the slave of this capitalistic society in America. Unfortunately, even they work very hard, in most of the time they will not get anything in return, such that Jurgis’s family cannot even keep the house at the of the book and many of family members’ health destroyed by the harsh working conditions in the
In chapter 14 the family by now knows the secrets of the meat packing industry. They cant speak out because they are afraid to lose their job. Jurgis starts to drink heavily now but it isn’t going to help. Jurgis’s son is going through some tough times just turning one year he is already suffering illnesses. Moving through the chapter I find out Ona is pregnant again; which is strange because they just had one about a year ago.
Since the nineteenth century, the food industry has worsened due to the presence of national monopolies with ties to the government. In The Jungle, Jurgis loses his job at Durhams, and other employers refuse to hire him because of Durhams local monopoly. Later in the novel, Jurgis learns that the police and the mayor formed agreements with large corporations their executives’ transgressions were forgiven.
All the adults must now work to help provide for the family. When Jurgis gets hurt and can’t work, the children must leave school and find jobs. After a series of tragedies, including near starvation, illness, several deaths in the family, and some time in jail. Life eventually changes Jurgis as he is robbed of his strength, health and spirit. He is forced to live a life not fit for an animal.