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20th Century Immigrants In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is an American novel classic. This book provides a lens into the life of 20th century immigrants working in poor conditions throughout industrialization. Sinclair set out to expose the harsh conditions that these poor immigrants had to live in. By doing so, he wanted to show that not only was the meatpacking industry vile, but also wanted to show that capitalism doesn’t work. Sinclair thought that communism benefits everyone.
This story starts off as Ona and Jurgis, two Lithuanian immigrants, set off for America. They are engaged and intend to wed when they arrive in America. Once they get to Chicago they plan to have a traditional Lithuanian wedding. Ona becomes very worried about the cost of the wedding but Jurgis tells his newly wed bride that she should not worry. He will simply work harder to get the money (Sinclair, p. 18). Unfortunately for Jurgis, this is a lot …show more content…

Jurgis finds them living in a boarding house. In the boarding Ona is giving childbirth prematurel., Jurgis scrambles to find a midwife. Jurgis finds one and convinces her to do the job for only one dollar and 25 cents. Unfortunately Ona and the baby die (Sinclair, p. 203-204). Jurgis takes three dollars from the kids who sold papers that morning and goes to the saloon to drink away his sorrows. Jurgis finds no luck getting a job. Evntually he meets a rich woman and tells her his story. The woman gives Jurgis a letter of recommendation for a steel mill that her fiancé owns. This automatically gurantees Jurgis the job (Sinclair, p. 208-209). Jurgis’s son gives him hope and has been Jurgis's driving force since he was born. The distance between Chicago and the steel mill make it hard for him to see his son Jurgis perseveres anyway. Then one weekend when Jurgis returns home from the steel mill he finds out that his son had drown in a mud puddle. (Sinclair, p.

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After all of those ups and downs and ins and outs, the book ends on a “happy” note (well at least for the main character). Marija is now a prostitute and will probably never better her life, but Jurgis and Test Elzbieta have joined a socialist party and begin to “reform” their lives. I am beginning to feel that Sinclair was hiding a message throughout the book the entire time: Socialism is the Savior of Immigrant Workers, and it took him 31 Chapters to do it. FINAL THOUGHT:

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Subject: The Jungle mainly focuses on poor living conditions for the working class in 20th century Chicago. I learned how corrupt politics in this time period were, how gross the meatpacking industry used to be, and how hard immigrants had it when they came to America. This text is controversial because it gives suggestion that socialism is the better government system. This would split the sides into those for capitalism and those for socialism. Occasion: The Jungle was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair.

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Throughout the novel, Upton Sinclair shows the readers the harsh working conditions during the early nineteen hundreds. The owners of big meat companies would take advantage of their authority over the workers and treat them with no respect. The workers had strict rules such as taking off an hours pay if a worker is one minute late to work or having no days off. In the beginning of the novel, Ona requests a day off for her wedding with Jurgis but her boss refuses. Not only that, but they do not know what is in their medicine.

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However, readers at the time were not very concerned about the petty immigrants living on the lower rung of society. Rather, they cared about what affected them most: the condition of the meat they were eating-- and had been eating-- for years, that were produced by some of the very factories mentioned in Sinclair’s novel. For the majority of The Jungle’s readers, the fact that poor immigrants were being exploited was not bothersome. Instead, the fact that the food that readers had been eating for years contained the power to kill them seemed shocking, pushing the nation into a worried frenzy. Readers were disgusted by the facts they were reading, catalyzing the creation of administrations like the FDA.

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When Upton Sinclair, a progressive era muckraker, wrote The Jungle in 1906, he was attempting to bring knowledge of the horrific conditions in Packingtown to the average citizen. His revelations on the terrors of Packingtown helped to slowly improve the lives of the immigrants. Sinclair’s pursuit of knowledge relates to the slowly growing knowledge of the characters in The Jungle. Throughout the story the characters find themselves in many tragic circumstances that could have been more easily avoided if they had been more aware of their surroundings. The immigrants are full of a false hope for success that disillusions the reality of their life.

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Employees are forced to work for long periods of time without breaks and less pay. This especially affects Jurgis and his family because their main source of income has been cut. Ona, Jurgis's wife, has also just had a baby and because he is at work for so long he is not able to spend time with his baby. (Sinclair, 420) The laborers in Packingtown are worked at a greater speed, but also working for a long time.

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Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tension in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through his novel “The Jungle”. He used the story of a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, to show the harsh situation that immigrants had to face in the United States, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions in the meatpacking plants, as well as the tension between the capitalism and socialism in the United States during the early 1900s. In the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrants move into the United States, and most of them were from Europe. The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, like many other immigrants, have the “America Dream” which they believe America is heaven to them, where they can

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The Out of Many textbook discusses the history of America. A huge part of the history in America is industrialization. Chapter 19 of the textbook talks about the industrial city in which The Jungle by Upton Sinclair opens the realities factory life and work in the early 1900’s. The Jungle tells about the lives of the workers in factories, specifically meat, and how harsh and disgusting their work really was. The topic of industrial cities and their living and working conditions from the Out of Many textbook is weaved in The Jungle .

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During the 1900’s working conditions were undeniably horrible. In Packingtown everyday got more difficult as the days went on. In the meat packing business things were supposed to be done quick. Inside the factories packing, chopping, inspecting and people actions didn’t mix. Not only did the people in the factories suffered, the people outside of the factory also suffered.

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A Time for Struggle and Change Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, depicts the struggles of Lithuanian immigrants as they worked and lived in Chicago’s Packingtown at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The United States experienced an enormous social and political transformation; furthermore, the economy, factories, and transportation industry grew faster than anyone had ever seen. Immigrants and migrants were attracted to city life for its promise of employment and their chance at the American Dream. The poor working class had little to no rights, and they grappled with unfair business practices, unsafe working conditions, racism, Social Darwinism, class segregation, xenophobia, political corruption, strikes, starvation, poor housing,

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During the time period of the 1900’s, the meat packaging industry in Chicago, as Sinclair mentions in his novel, The Jungle, was a very unsanitary and extremely dangerous workplace that lacked much more than just a few safety precautions. Simple things, such as enforcing hand washing or workers’ rights were unheard of in the working environment. It is clear that Upton Sinclair was trying to expose the worker’s horrendous labor conditions in order to improve their situation, along with the introduction of socialism. Upton Sinclair, in his novel, talks about how a Lithuanian immigrant by the name of Jurgis Rudkus, and his family, travel to Chicago trying to make ends meet. However, they soon realize Chicago was not the place for that.

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