The Role Of Socialism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Upton Sinclair reflects the reality of the people during the late 1800’s in his novel The Jungle. In his novel, Sinclair wants to promote Socialism by showing how people lived in the meatpacking plant and under a corrupt government. The inhuman working conditions, combined with the lack of hygiene and a corrupt government, made trying to make a living a total hardships for the low class and the immigrants.
The Jungle takes place in Packingtown, Chicago, where the employees work under horrible conditions. In the meatpacking plants workers have to perform dangerous tasks and problems as the absence of heat in the winter or conditioning air in summer, make the situation worst. ‘’Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of …show more content…

The Jungle presents a corrupted government that abuses its power in other to get personal satisfaction and accomplished interests. A good example is how the government pays the immigrants for their votes promising a better lifestyle (251). Also, people lived under unfair accusations and sentences to jail. ’’Poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday privileges and general favors nor that the pugilist bartender was one of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic.’’ (245). It is shown how the economic status gives different power to people. Corruption in the late 1800’s was about the big guy against the small guy; the people who had money had all the power above the immigrants and the lower class.
Sinclair used these different arguments to persuade people to turn into socialism, showing the dark side of the government at the time of the Gilded Age. The bad working conditions, the absence of sanitation and the corruption made difficult for people to succeed in life, taking away their rights and opportunities making a real hardship for the working class to make a

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