Review: The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

America seems to be the perfect, amazing country to live in. Almost every immigrant wants to come to America to seek the most extraordinary life. In the novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Sinclair writes about a family of twelve from Lithuania who comes to Chicago, Illinois to seek the ideal American life that consists of freedom and wealth by working in the meat packing industry. The family of twelve who came to Chicago are Jurdis, Ona, Antanas, Teta Elzbieta, Jonas, Marija, and lastly, Ona's six step-brothers and step-sisters, Stanislovas, Kotrina, Vilimas, Nikolajus, Juozapas, and Kristoforas. The family has heard successful stories from Jonas, Ona’s step-uncle who has a friend who lived in Chicago. Jonas’s friend has become successful

“..a man who was one minute late was docked an hour .. came ahead of time he got no pay for that..” (87). If an employee came to work one minute late, they would not get paid for that one hour. If an employee came early to work, they would not get paid for that time coming early. This working condition is unfair because sometimes the late or early arrival to work is due to transportation. The weather in Chicago is insane. During the winter, there would be snow storms and there would be no transportation for work. At times the street cars would be out as well. A couple of times, Jurdis had to walk to work in the snow storm. One of Teta Elzbieta’s son’s coworker has frostbites on his fingers due to the freezing cold winter storm. The administrator of the meat packing industry should be grateful that their employees even showed up to work during the insane winter storms. There are times when there would be a rush production of processing meat, usually at the end of the day. These rush productions usually causes accidents because the employees do not have the proper clothing nor did they have the proper equipment to prevent hazards. The administrators of these corporations do not care about their employees. If a person were to be injured or died unexpectedly, they did not care because there are plenty of immigrants standing outside of their companies waiting to

“..whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage.” (133). The sanitation in the meat packing industry was very repulsive. Meats that were spoiled would still be made into food, either into canned food or into sausages. Most of the time, the meat in the pickling rooms are usually spoiled. If the meat in the pickling rooms were found spoiled and there was no good use for anything, the spoiled meat would be made into food. There were many secrets on how to turn spoiled meat into almost everything. Employees can change a foul smell of the spoiled meat into no odor. They can change the color of the meats into any color. They can also make a piece of meat that looks disgusting into a piece of meat that looks fresh. Due to the magic of salt and chemicals, anything can be done. Meats that are accidently dropped on the ground would still be used for production. The employees would pick up the meat, slightly clean the meat by dusting the filth off, and would be put back into the machines to be processed into canned food or into sausages. Almost every part of the animal would be used for production. Nothing was wasted in the meat packing