ipl-logo

Review Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

844 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Assingment about jungle book

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, is set in Chicago in the early 1900’s, during the height of social reform known as the Progressive era. The population of Chicago had grown substantially, from 29,000 in 1850 to 1.7million in 1900, due to the influx of immigrants in search of the “American dream”. America was the destination of all in search of freedom, equality and higher wages. The dream promised success in exchange for hard work, determination and morality. The reality was that the “American dream” was just an illusion. Public services were being overwhelmed with the number of immigrants flooding American cities resulting in unsanitary conditions, garbage littered streets and lack of clean water. The cities of New York and Chicago were being plagued with outbreaks of cholera and typhoid due to the raw sewage flowing in from Lake Michigan. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite …show more content…

Capitalism turns decent human beings into selfish, merciless individuals preying on the innocent to satisfy themselves. The Rudkus family buys a home in hopes of saving money but are not told about the hidden fees associated with owning a house. The women in the family set out to find work and the children are forced to drop out of school to work as well. Ona is blackmailed by her boss into having a sexual affair. Upon discovering this, Jurgis becomes enraged and is arrested after attacking Ona’s boss. The loose of his income puts an enormous financial strain on the family causing them to lose their home. After being released from jail, Jurgis finds Ona in premature labor and is devastated when she is unable to survive the grueling event. This will trigger the chain of events that leads the entire family to lose their jobs and Jurgis finds himself in and out of work and jail. He eventually leaves the city when he becomes too distraught after his young son drowns in a puddle of muddy

Show More
Related

Rhetorical Analysis Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

159 Words | 1 Pages

“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.

Read More

Upton Sinclair The Jungle Propaganda

348 Words | 2 Pages

When Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, a book about the terrible environment of the meat-packing factories in Chicago, he hoped to motivate reform in immigrant working conditions and promote socialism. Instead, what shocked readers the most was the sordid surroundings in which their future meals were prepared. Sinclair 's audience saw these conditions as a threat to themselves, and that energized reform in the meat-packing industry. What scared audiences the most was how real this threat was to their lives. As can be witnessed in the results of Sinclair 's crusade, the most effective propaganda is that which rouses the visceral survival instinct.

Read More

Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

990 Words | 4 Pages

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a book that shows social darwinism. Social darwinism is shown in the book when Jurgis breaks his shoulder working in the steel factory and he has to stay at home to get better, but when he goes back to work they already have someone else in his place already. So Jurgis has to go around town looking for a new job but no one will hire him because he’s blacklisted. Other themes in the book are capitalism and socialism. Capitalism has driven people to do terrible things in order to survive.

Read More

Review Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: A Book For Societal Change

1268 Words | 6 Pages

A Book for Societal Change As one thinks about the change brought about by a book named The Jungle, one might think of its call to preserve forests or wildlife. However, in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, he writes about something completely different. Sinclair writes this book to expose the meat packing industry and its horrific conditions for the meat and for the workers while also promoting socialism as the ideal form of government. His socialists views expressed in the book lead the book to be banned in several countries.

Read More

Review Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1370 Words | 6 Pages

The Jungle is a story that revolves around the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his family, the Lithuanian immigrant who came to America to lead a better life and worked at meatpacking plants of early 20th century Chicago. The story showcases the hardship that they underwent due to the harsh and bad working condition, poverty, starvation and being cheated by unjust people agents, eventually losing all their money. The Jungle provides us ways to look at the unfettered capitalism that prevailed in the early 20th century. This book also exposes the corruption, inequality, unjustness, sickness and slavery that existed in the society.

Read More

Chapter Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1144 Words | 5 Pages

His family has also suffered, but not to this extent. After the death of his wife and son Jurgis was finished with the life he had created in Packingtown. He decided to escape to the countryside, and leave everything and everyone behind. There Jurgis feels free, but the ghost of what he had left behind soon caught up with him, and he began to feel guilt for those he left behind. At first I found this to be quite selfish of him, but after he started to feel guilty about his actions I began to sympathize with him.

Read More

Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

997 Words | 4 Pages

In the twentieth century, the government of the United States began taking more of an interest in the food industry. Soon after the twentieth century began, the government realized the harsh conditions in the factories and how unsanitary they were so they went from favoring big businesses to passing laws against the cruelties they did and regulating the items sold in the United States. The government’s regulation of the food industry in American history has evolved from them ignoring the problems and letting factories do what they wanted in the nineteenth century, to them having full control over the food industry in the present-day by passing laws and creating organizations such as the Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Food

Read More

Summary Of 1906 Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1148 Words | 5 Pages

In 1906 Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a fictional novel that depicted the working class’ lifestyle and working conditions in the American city of Chicago. It focused on the meat-packing industry of the 20th century and the capitalist elite achieving success through the manipulation of poor immigrants, corruption of the capitalist government, institutions and its exploits of the growing industrial American state. Though Sinclair’s novel received critical acclaim for its reveal of the poor environmental and health conditions of the meat-packing industry, was there an underlying ideology he sought to impose and if so was he successful in his attempt? The third-person narration of The Jungle, enables Upton Sinclair from making his argument

Read More

The Importance Of Knowledge In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1021 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More

The Economic Tension In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1899 Words | 8 Pages

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

Read More

Immigrants Exposed In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1074 Words | 5 Pages

Immigrants faced harsh living and working conditions, racial strife, poverty, as well as social class issues. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explores many of these hardships immigrants had to face through the lives of Lithuanian Immigrants. Throughout his novel, Sinclair focuses on poverty and thoughts of what America was supposed to be like to portray hardships immigrants faced when coming to America.

Read More

Working Conditions In The Jungle

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.

Read More

The Role Of Socialism In Sinclair's The Jungle

799 Words | 4 Pages

Sinclair’s book The Jungle shows the hard situations that people in the time period unfortunately had. With many families coming into America, people were coming from all over to work in these jobs. The story follows Jergis, an immigrant who gets married and gets a new job at the meat packaging plant in Packingtown. His entire family moves out of a very small apartment and into a bigger and nicer house.

Read More

Ayn Rand's The Jungle

508 Words | 3 Pages

The family had a hard time keeping up with the rent. Day after day, week after week, problems seemed to show up. Jurgis suffered from injuries, illness, being laid off, and dealing with horrible bosses and pay. Ona’s boss rapes her and Jurgis tracks him down and attacks him. Jurgis is thrown in jail, and the families lose a major source of income.

Read More

Examples Of Struggles In The Jungle

2149 Words | 9 Pages

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,

Read More

More about Review Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Related Topics

Open Document