How Should We Teach The Jungle Rhetorical Analysis

“How Should We Teach The Jungle” by Christopher Phelps has a more convincing argument than “Of Meat and Myth” by Lawrence W. Reed. It is incontrovertible that Phelps believes The Jungle should be taught. Phelps not only includes his ideas, but he also includes others’ ideas to support his own. This way, his argument is supported by more than just facts, unlike Reed’s argument. In “How Should We Teach The Jungle”, Phelps uses evidence, reasoning, and style to show that The Jungle is important in shaping the intellectual development of the youth. To begin, evidence is used to strengthen Phelps’ argument that The Jungle can shape the intellectual development of the youth. For example, the portrayal of African-Americans is a strong part of Phelps’

He states, “The demise of the Rudkus family, she[Louise Carroll Wade] argues, is far-fetched , given the statistically improbable series of disasters that befall it within a few years’ time” (3). Wade, a social historian, uses reasoning to support her idea that all these events that happen to the Rudkus family are highly unlikely. This makes the reader skeptical about the reality of this book and have sympathy for the Rudkus family. Phelps uses Wade’s point to further express the reasoning behind the Rudkus family’s misfortunes, “we consider Jurgis a literary personification of the whole immigrant working class” (3). This relates to the previous quote saying how all these horrible and unfortunate events happen only to the Rudkus family because they represent all the working class families and the difficulties they faced. 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

Phelps suggests, “First, students love it... even undergraduates who consider history “boring” respond to The Jungle” (2). The incredible detail of the events that occurs at the meatpacking industry that Sinclair uses in this novel has made even uninterested students interested. Sinclair criticizes the unfairness of capitalism as well. Phelps comments, “The objective was to break the unions, drive down wages, and speed up processing” (2). The purpose of capitalism was to allow the upper class to remain in power, such as Connor and Scully, while restricting the working class, such as Jurgis and Ona, from obtaining enough money to support their families. Phelps uses negative words such as “racist” and “vulnerable” to inculcate the hardships immigrants had suffered which leads to shaping the intellectual development of the youth because this way the reader can have a glimpse of what it was like to be an immigrant at that