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Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

610 Words3 Pages

Around seventy percent of Americans claim to hate their job, but The Jungle by Upton Sinclair puts into perspective how fortunate they really are (Adeline). This novel goes into detail about what was actually happening in the meat packing plants of 1906 and how it affected the employees’ mental and physical health. The workers in the meat packing plants had it much worse than those seventy percent today. They described their job with many negative words such as “agony”. The use of the word “agony” in The Jungle proves that the so-called employees were actually just slaves. One of Sinclair’s main points in The Jungle is that the employees working in the plant had their mental and physical health at risk. The plants were not cleaned and were very unsanitary. There were huge piles of ground up meat sitting in dark rooms filled with rats. Each day someone would have to “run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.” According to the New York Department of Health, rat droppings can carry viruses such as hantavirus, which can cause minor flu-like symptoms or cause fluid buildup in the lungs preventing you from breathing. …show more content…

However, in this case the employees could not really quit. The immigrants working in the meat packing plants could not work many other places because they did not have a great education and most of them did not know much english. The workers did not have set hours, and they had to work whenever they were told to. They would be forced to show up early in the morning when it was freezing cold and wait until they were told to work. If they showed up late, they would not get paid for the first hour of their work. Then, they could not leave until they were told to. The awful hours that the workers had to be there are comparable to the hours that slaves would

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Role Of Upton Sinclair's Living And Dying In Packingtown

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Sinclair explains, “all of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it ‘special,’ and for this they would charge two cents more a pound” (pg. 79). Sinclair’s detailed exposure of the production of products being consumed by society caused a strong public reaction, and is what The Jungle is commonly known for describing. While his work may be more commonly known for exposing the meatpacking industry, Sinclair also successfully exposed the horrific working conditions and their effects. His purpose was to improve working conditions and expose the immorality and indecency of industry and capitalism. Sinclair easily convinced society of this motive through gruesome detail of the Rudkus’ experiences.

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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

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In “The Jungle”, Upton Sinclair depends upon the use of pathos through imagery to portray the theme of the dehumanizing evils of meat industry. To Appeal to the unaware American consumers about the process of meat process and the harsh way the workers are treated, the author includes in his excerpt, “There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.” Sinclair doesn’t want people to pass through his message unnoticed, through his carefully picked imagery, he wants them to imagine the life visually to make a change. Through his quote, “tumbled out on the floor in the dirt and sawdust” he is expressing how the workers who are working

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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

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Successes And Failures In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

845 Words | 4 Pages

The intense details of the unsanitary conditions simply overshadow the true purpose behind Sinclair’s writing because it is more memorable. In today’s world if people heard about “meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit and uncounted amount of germs…thousands of rats [racing] about on it” (Sinclair 1450, there is no doubt that they would never consider eating in the place that was just documented about. While reading about poisoned rats being thrown into the food hopper along with their droppings, and the bread that killed them, it is nearly impossible for a reader to continue on without cringing at the thought of such filth. After reading about an incident that would affect

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Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Thus, Sinclair’s purpose of writing The Jungle failed to bring readers to advocate for the rights of workers trapped in the low wages, unsafe working conditions, and long hours of meatpacking factories, but rather, succeeded in opening the country’s eyes to the meatpacking practices that went on behind closed doors and the establishment administrations to protect the public from these unscrupulous

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The Jungle-Like Atmosphere In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Upton Sinclair, a successful muckraker in the early 1900s, is the author to the gut-wrenching novel, The Jungle. In this story, Sinclair incorporates real facts he learned from going, undercover, into a meat-packing factory. Upton believed that the working conditions and the lifestyle the immigrants were forced to live in, during this time, were heinous; because of this he strives to create a novel that will gain the attention of the government and large factories in order to create better working conditions and quality of life. To accomplish this feat Sinclair subtly compares the meat-packing factory to a jungle; he speaks of physical and mental aspects such as temperature and a hierarchy, includes ages and lifespans, and also integrates animal imagery. Fusing all of these different factors gives The Jungle the exact jungle-like atmosphere Sinclair was hoping to obtain.

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Awarness Of Conditions In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1385 Words | 6 Pages

This awareness motivated the actions of reformers and civilians, which therefore fueled Progressivism. In The Jungle by Sinclair, he wrote, “These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together, (79). Sinclair also described the contamination of meat by factory workers, the rotting of meat, and the generally unsanitary conditions of a meatpacking plant (79). While The Jungle’s main purpose was to highlight and raise awareness of the terrible working conditions of employees, public outrage was mainly focused on passages like these. Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” in reference to the misunderstanding.

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Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1860 Words | 8 Pages

While he sought to change the system of labor in the United States with his novel, The Jungle, he instead impacted the food industry, which saw changes in the food and production process. Fortunately for Sinclair, I have discovered why he failed. Unfortunately for Sinclair, I am forty-nine years too late. Sinclair fails to make labor changes through his novel because

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1900's Meat Packing Industry

665 Words | 3 Pages

Although it may seem that the meat packing industry is still in turmoil because of their unwillingness to make known what foods have Genetically Modified organisms present, the meat packing industry was much worse during the 1900’s because of the unsafe working conditions, and uncleanliness of the food. Body 1: The meat packing industry’s working conditions were much worse in the 1900’s than they are today. In the novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, working conditions were horrible for immigrants who were employed in these factories. People in these factories were worked very hard and used up till they could not work anymore. In the novel Jurgis broke his ankle because of the unsafe

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The Destruction Of Capitalism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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The publication of The Jungle in 1906 had a powerful affect on America, though not quite the affect that Sinclair had hoped for. His novel was meant to open people’s eyes to the poor conditions that workers are put through and the destructiveness of capitalism. However, reader’s main concern after reading this was the conditions of the meat packing plants and how their food was

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Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1741 Words | 7 Pages

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to portray the lives of wage workers in industrialized areas of the United States. His goal in publishing this story was to promote the Socialist movement, but many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary production practices in the meatpacking industry. The novel depicts working class poverty, – or “wage slavery” – the absence of social programs, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and the hopelessness that wage workers experienced. He compares these components with the presence of deeply rooted corruption in people with power. During the Gilded Age, corruption was the biggest obstacle preventing workers from achieving prosperity, as well as the most

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The Role Of Socialism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

2394 Words | 10 Pages

The Jungle was a large contribution to a growing awareness of the need for better working conditions. It also helped pave the way for the establishment of the Department of Labor in 1913. Overall, the novel played an important role in highlighting the plight of workers in the meatpacking industry and helping to spread awareness about the horrific conditions that they had to

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The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1045 Words | 5 Pages

Immigrant workers were limited of their freedom and constantly exploited due to the fact that they were working in hazardous working conditions, were living in deplorable conditions, and were being harassed under the intimidating power of corrupt politicians. Such miseries the immigrants had to face included the hazardous working conditions where they had to stay for long hours. There was no doubt that workers had either die or were injured as they worked in such environment. In Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the dangers of working conditions are emphasized through Jurgis’ incident at the meatpacking plant.

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Upton Sinclair's 'A Response To The Jungle'

599 Words | 3 Pages

A Response to the Jungle The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel about what Sinclair observed when he took a trip to Chicago’s “Packingtown” area in 1904. The book is best known for illustrating the filthy production of meat using unnatural substances and unfavorable parts of animals. Sinclair also described the atrocious conditions that immigrant workers lived and worked in, often resulting in bodily injury and even death.

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Strengths Of The Jungle

1054 Words | 5 Pages

This provided Sinclair with an advantage when comparing himself to other novelist during this time, because he didn’t only see how this mass production was at play, but he was also able to hear first-hand accounts of the emotional and physical sturggles that the workers were facing. Furthermore, Barrett explains how Sinclair refused to sugar-coat or dust over any areas of great disturbance within this industry. Barrett adds, “Sinclair’s real genius, clearly displayed in The Jungle, was an unrelenting realism in describing the grittier details of life among common people” (xv). This is a very important aspect of this novel, because despite the stomach-churring details and scenes that one may have experienced, instead of masking it and creating something that is less significant, Sinclair dove deep into the depths of the packing industry, and uncovered every hidden corner of the packing industry. However, Barret explains that because of Sinclair’s extensive detail within the pages of The Jungle, the overall goal that Sinclair initially wanted to achieve was partially skewed, by ‘accidently hitting the public in the stomach rather than their hearts’

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