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Social Class In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, is best known as a fiction story. It talks about how immigrants were treated cruelly, in a packing town somewhere in Chicago. Which is where he asked most of his questions, as a journalist. One of the questions applied to how the social class affects their structure at work. An immigrant, low social class background for a character named Jurgis demonstrates how inequitable life can be in the early 1900s. Jurgis was very enthusiastic and eager about how things worked in Chicago compared to Lithuania. He never imagined "one hog dressed by several hundred men"(43) considering that Lithuania usually had just one man and one hog. He explained almost every detail to his family about how things worked in the meat package. Although later on in the …show more content…

He then got out and kept drinking, although was told by this girl that she could no longer let him stay because of his smell (Sinclair 233). He was homeless and still a drinker for some weeks since he couldn’t get over Ona's death. Although he then realized he had children to take care of, thanks to Elizbetea (Ona's step mother). Elizbeta had found him out in the streets starving since she was asking her neighbors for some pennies for she had no help from Ona or him (sinclair 229).
The reasons why Elizbeta wasn’t working was because she was to old and knew too much about what was happening to the meat. She knew that the meat were being poisoned by rats because when the rats died, they would mix both meats together (Sinclair 160-162). Even though she did try to reach out towards the public, since they were the ones who were getting fed, they wouldn't bother to listen. Although she did end up getting tired of reaching out like most of the other workers. That she ended up receiving all the spoiled food and kept working for her family until she was

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In early 1900, specifically, 1906, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written. This novel told the story of a Lithuanian immigrant who worked in a filthy Chicago meatpacking plant. It exposed the meatpacking industry by stating their vile practices not only towards their meat but their workers as well. This was a result of the combination of many immigrants in the United States to pursue a better life, and the fact that many big industries were looking for ways to maximize their profit.

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