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Animal Imagery In Packingtown, By Upton Sinclair

846 Words4 Pages

Imagine travelling to a foreign country, knowing no one, being unable to speak the native language, not even having a place to stay the night. The immigrant family arrives in America with hopes of a better life, instead facing extreme challenges, struggling to survive in the Chicago stockyards. The reader experiences the tough life of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian man doing all he can in order to keep his family alive. From beginning to end, the reader witnesses the accounts and situations the family is living through, while working at the meat factory and other jobs they have to work as an attempt to stay alive. In The Jungle, author Upton Sinclair uses vivid imagery catering to the readers senses, in order to present how employers treated immigrants …show more content…

Nowadays many people in the world are sensitive to how animals are treated in the meat packing industry. The reason the sensitivity is as widespread as it is now is thanks to Sinclair's vivid imagery he uses to capture the reader's attention and sympathy. The methods the packers used to kill the animals can be described as cruel and disgusting. "There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and life-blood ebbing away together, until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water"(37). The cruelty of slaughtering the animals within the book, affects the visitors who witness the killings. Workers in the factory show no sympathy or sensitivity for the animals they are slaughtering row by row. When immigrants are introduced to the working world in the factories, many have to desensitize themselves to the horrors of the meat packing plants. If the workers were unable to desensitize themselves from the horrors of Packingtown, then the immigrants would be out of a job. Sinclair does an excellent job of assisting the reader in imagining the dismay of slaughtering the animals in mass …show more content…

Sinclair has the reader imagine the bosses, supervising the immigrants working day and night in the factories, as slave drivers. Imagining the bosses in such a way, is cruel to begin with, and leads the reader to have sympathy for the workers. However, nothing has been mentioned about the working conditions. The factories do not insulate the workers from the winter frost or the summer heat. Much of the work eventually kills the immigrants, either slowly, by them getting sick from the continual speeding up of the factory, or by the poor workers instantly get killed. It's possible the victims of the industry died by falling in the grinders and joining in with the meat eventually on it's way to a family's dinner table. However, in Packingtown, the reader witnesses plenty of other ways the innocent can

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“With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great Packingtown swindles” (par.1). This statement from Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, introduces trust from a family because of their own personal knowledge . The Jungle, features an immigrant family trying to survive in 1900’s Chicago meat packing district. In the story, Sinclair’s goal is to expose the miserable life of immigrants who work in factories.

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“The same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek.” This was Upton Sinclair’s description of the city of Chicago in the early 20th century in his book The Jungle, and it was not flattering. The things that went on inside the city was even uglier, and it was done by one corporate, capitalism. Capitalism became a major problem in America as it bred horrible working and living conditions for the working class, and there was many reasons for why this happened (i.e. greed).

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In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.

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Revealing the harsh treatment of meatpacking workers and showing the reality of the disgusting conditions found in butchery shops to the public, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle became an enduring classic by American readers throughout the early twentieth century the prompted the later creation of the Federal Drug Administration. In the early 1900s, America was explosively transitioning from an agricultural society to a thriving manufacturing-based nation. As production demand in factories grew throughout the country, the work force needed to run those factories also expanded. A new type of demanding and dangerous work became prevalent throughout the nation, as immigrants coming into the “Land of Opportunity” found themselves desperate

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During this time period, life was not only difficult for immigrants, but for American citizens too. There are many problems Sinclair addresses in The Jungle but one problem, he focuses on is poor working conditions such as an unsanitary workplace, long working hours, and no safety precautions. Poor working conditions are present throughout the novel, whether a character is experiencing it or Sinclair explains it. One example is when the main character, Jurgis Rudkus, is hired at Brown’s Meat Factory as someone who mops meat guts into a hole in the floor (Sinclair, 163). He is so excited to have work, that he does not realize how unsanitary his job is.

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634 Words | 3 Pages

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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2371 Words | 10 Pages

Upton Sinclair, a muckraker, brought attention to the American public, about the meatpacking industry in his book The Jungle. In his book, it revolved around a Lithuanian immigrant family, who immigrated to Chicago and the difficulties and poverty they faced while in Packington. The purpose of the novel was to bring about attention and expose the conditions of the meatpacking industry, so that the government would be forced to to fix it. The intended audience that Sinclair hoped it would catch the attention of was the American public so they could be exposed to the hidden truth about the meat packing industry and the government as well, so that they could also pass food safety laws.(Doc.2) Although it was a fictional story, it was successful in bringing attention to how filthy the meatpacking industry was to the government and public.

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Working conditions are horrible, as Jurgis describes when he says “The men worked ankle deep in blood on the hottest days of July for hours on end without a break” (Sinclair 33). In the Winter, Jurgis also describes “Fingers snapping from frostbite” and “Workers dozing off only to never wake again.” As shown by these examples, the bosses don’t care about the workers at all, and the book states, ”Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to rise and become a skilled man; but he would soon find out his error—for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a rule—if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man would rise; the man who told tales and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own business and did his work—why, they would "speed him up" till they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter” (Sinclair 54).

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853 Words | 4 Pages

Upton Sinclair purposely tries to shock the reader by explaining the corruption in the meat industries in detail. Sinclair says “In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death,” (58) later in the book, he also describes the meat industries by saying “there were whole cellars full of it (animals)... In yet other rooms they were putting up meat in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper.” (82) The extra description of the meat industries was really unnecessary because it can disgust the reader, but at the same time shock them which is Sinclair’s goal.

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1419 Words | 6 Pages

Many times, workers didn’t have time to have a social life outside of work. Sinclair writes, “There are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold cellars with a quarter of an inch of water on the floor-men who for six or seven months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning” (Sinclair 13). Although these are extreme examples presented by the author, it shows us that they were real issues dealt with at the time. Along with long hours, pay for the workers was almost unlivable.

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1202 Words | 5 Pages

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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