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Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

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For my book report I chose to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. This book focused on the malicious traits of capitalism. These flawed features are displayed throughout the book through events that the characters go through. The book later turns to show that the solution to all the capitalist problems happening in the book is socialism. I believe the overall purpose of this book was for Sinclair to express his beliefs of a better system and to expose the dangerous things that come with capitalism. This book does not waste time showing the tribulations in the life of an immigrant in that time. Lithuanian immigrants Jurgis and Ona go searching for better opportunities in Chicago. The two quickly run into financial issues after holding a wedding …show more content…

Sinclair built practically this whole book around that. He based the family around the things that happened in real life. It was really a view into an immigrants life back in that time. The family had to eat rotten food because of the pure food issue that was going on when immigrants started coming to America. The family goes through a lot of corruption in this time and it just gets worse and worse as the book goes on. Jurgis wife gets raped and when Jurgis finds this out, he attacks the man who raped his wife. Because of this action, he is sent to jail for over a month and spends Christmas in jail. When he gets out things get even worse. He finds out that his family had been evicted while he was in prison. They had moved back to the bordering house they were in when they immigrated to Chicago. When he gets there he witnesses his wife’s death during premature child birth. As tragic as this was it was not his breaking point. When his son Antanas drowns, Jurgis feels like he has been defeated. His son’s death caused him so much grief that he abandons his family. Jurgis then survives off of begging and committing crime. A lot of immigrants did some questionable things like this to get by. They were so desperate that they would do anything to make ends meet. As if things couldn’t get any worse, Jurgis goes back to jail for the same reason he went the first time. When he is released, he learns that some of his

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Lastly, Jurgis is finally shown as a criminal. This is first shown when he goes to jail for the first time. While in jail he meets a guy by the name of Jack Duane. This is the guy that opens doors for Jurgis to become a criminal. The author shows this by stating (insert quote here).

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Jurgis Rudkus and his family were the victims of American society. When Jurgis and his family emigrated to America, they knew very little English. Due to their lack of English, they got taken advantage of when it came to buying their home. Jurgis and his family were promised a brand new home with top of the line utilities. Instead, they bought a home that was old and made out of cheap materials.

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At the end of the book, Jurgis wanders into a social rally, completely distraught, due to his emotional, and most likely physical, pain. The speech that he hears at this rally inspires him, leading him to join said party, to which it helps him get a job, allowing him to find one of his relatives, Teta

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Millions of people each day go to the store and purchase meat, produce, and medicine, without worrying if it’s safe, or whether it may be contaminated with things like paint stripper or cocaine. Prior to 1906, there was no organization to monitor whether or not any food or drug contained what it said, let alone if it was safe to be consumed. Even though legislation wouldn’t come for many more years, research into food safety dates all the way back to 1862 when scientist Charles M. Wetherill, who worked for the Department of Agriculture, began testing samples of food for purity. Wetherill’s first project focused on the alcohol content in wine but later led to him and other scientists focusing on problems such as contaminated milk from cows with

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Jurgis gains a new perspective of everything around him and everything that has happened. The main character Jurgis Rudkus is an immigrant coming to America. He searches for a job to provide money for his wife and parents. In the article Schema Criticism by Mark Bracher, he emphasizes that, “Jurgis is the prototypical image of autonomy. He is powerful, exuberant, striking figure who towers above the other workers” (32).

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There are many other traps around America that deceive the immigrants because their weakness of not knowing English and the desire of getting a great life in America which lead them unpreparedly get fooled by the businessmen. These traps prevented the immigrants from leaving America, because of the significant amount of debt that they have to pay each month, which forced them to keep working and become the slave of this capitalistic society in America. Unfortunately, even they work very hard, in most of the time they will not get anything in return, such that Jurgis’s family cannot even keep the house at the of the book and many of family members’ health destroyed by the harsh working conditions in the

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1194 Words | 5 Pages

Sinclair’s novel The Jungle has many themes in the book. It starts off as a family moving to America for a better life. Many things happened in the book for explain all the dishonest men, the significance of the title, society, Jurgis encounters, the significance of the quote, “I aimed for the public heart, and...hit it in the stomach.” The United States wasn't what they expected but life is like an elevator,on your way up you sometimes have to stop and let somebody off.

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He feels the pressure and the injustice of the system more than ever during his time in jail. Jurgis’ experience with the policemen of Packingtown supported his role as a protagonist. “On his way to his cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down the wrong corridor [...] Jurgis did not even lift his eyes— he had lived two years and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were. It was as much as a man’s very life was worth to anger them...”

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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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