ipl-logo

Life In The Lower Class Analysis

703 Words3 Pages

Life in the Lower Class In the novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair uses various literary devices to portray the naturalism movement in the view of a Lithuanian immigrant living in America. Sinclair uses symbolism to portray the house that Jurgis and Ona desire to live in as the beginning of their American dream, he also uses foreshadow as he mentions the innocent hogs being slaughtered at the factory which foreshadows Jurgis and his families future as these innocent people begin to face hardships leading to their end. The negative diction in which Sinclair uses in this novel portrays a poignant and despicable lifestyle in Chicago. Jurgis and Ona were newly weds who came to America shortly after their marriage in Lithuania. Upon arrival to the states Jurgis and his wife lived in a boarding house for a while as Jurgis went in search of a job. Jurgis manages to obtain a job at the slaughterhouse and after making some decent income Jurgis and his family decide to move out and buy a house. Jurgis stumbles upon a real estate advertisement showing a four room house worth $1500. Jurgis and his wife were intrigued by the quality of the house that was shown on the advertisement and believed that this was the beginning to their American Dream. Jurgis began …show more content…

The ad of the house in the paper symbolizes the American Dream but the house in reality symbolizes deceit as Jurgis finds out that the ad is untruthful and misleading. The helpless hogs on the conveyor belt foreshadow Jurgis’s powerless future since he is unable to overcome life in the lower class due to various hardships. Sinclair’s use of word choice helps portray the ugliness of human existence for allowing the distribution of poorly sanitized meat, and the struggles of living in society’s lower class in

Show More
Related

The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1992 Words | 8 Pages

Jurgis and his family went to purchase a house but found out they will be paying monthly, which resembles more of a rent based system than a purchase. On top of moving into a new house they have learned that the payments also have an interest fee on top of their monthly amount. One of their neighbors decides to share a story with them about other families that have not been able to pay off the house and have been evicted which highlights the corrupt nature of the landlords. It also points out that the families before them have had to rely on a key wage earner for the monthly payments and when they are overcome by disease or injury from the stockyards they lose the house. Unfortunately, Jurgis’s family is effected by the diseases from the stockyards as well but they do not have time to take off work in order

Read More

The Meatpacking Industry In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

360 Words | 2 Pages

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is a novel that depicts the lives of Lithuanian immigrants working in the meatpacking industry in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The jungle refers to the harsh and unforgiving environment of the meatpacking district, where workers are subjected to dangerous working conditions, unsanitary living quarters, and exploitation by powerful meatpacking companies. The book opens with Jurgis Rudkus, a strong and proud Lithuanian immigrant, arriving in Chicago with his family. They quickly find work in the meatpacking district, but soon discover that the reality of their new life is far harsher than they had imagined.

Read More

The Food Process In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1261 Words | 6 Pages

In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.

Read More

The Unfair Treatment Of Immigrants In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

427 Words | 2 Pages

The Unfair Treatment of Immigrants in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Imagine going somewhere new, far away and ending up in a bad situation with no way out. That’s how Jurgis and his family felt when they left their home country of Lithuania to come to America to pursue their dreams of wealth. Their world was quickly turned upside down when they realized that the deck was stacked against them in Chicago’s unfair system, which was designed to leave them trapped. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair will bring you into the world of manipulation and poverty in Chicago during the 1900s.

Read More

Jokubas's Life In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

1625 Words | 7 Pages

Jurgis agreed upon arriving Jurgis could not believe such a huge house with a lot of expenses things. The man said that he own a meatpacking company. At the end of the story Jurgis conversion to socialism. The novel has a switch from narrative to

Read More

Jurgis Rudkus In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

710 Words | 3 Pages

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).

Read More

Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1060 Words | 5 Pages

However, readers at the time were not very concerned about the petty immigrants living on the lower rung of society. Rather, they cared about what affected them most: the condition of the meat they were eating-- and had been eating-- for years, that were produced by some of the very factories mentioned in Sinclair’s novel. For the majority of The Jungle’s readers, the fact that poor immigrants were being exploited was not bothersome. Instead, the fact that the food that readers had been eating for years contained the power to kill them seemed shocking, pushing the nation into a worried frenzy. Readers were disgusted by the facts they were reading, catalyzing the creation of administrations like the FDA.

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

Examples Of Adapting To A Cruel World In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

408 Words | 2 Pages

Adapting to a Cruel World The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a perfect example of man vs. society. The brutal labor and poverty defines the harsh reality of this 1906 novel. While exploring this cruel society, Jurgis Rudkus, the protagonist, faces many hardships and becomes an acknowledgeable person. This is evident when Jurgis involves himself with barbaric working conditions, his vulnerable family, and socialist beliefs.

Read More

Oregon Shooting Case Study

302 Words | 2 Pages

Jesse and Cheyanne Fitzgeneral’s family was one of those impacted by the Oregon shooting. They were pro-gun before and continue to be after the shooting. Mr. Fitzgeneral said, "We should have teachers trained in non-lethal ways to take people down. There is surely a way to defend kids at school. Armed guards on campuses maybe” (Dorstewit).

Read More

Symbolism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1433 Words | 6 Pages

The Jungle In the literary work, The Jungle, the author, Upton Sinclair makes a commentary on the deceitful and dark truth of the American dream. This was achieved by using the canned meat that was produced in Packingtown as a symbol to represent the dream that all the immigrants had about their new lives in America. As the story progresses, the reader, along with the protagonist, Jurgis will discover that the American dream lies cloaked behind a shroud of beautiful lies that masks the vile truths that are the American dream and the canned “beef” processed by the corrupt meat business in Packingtown.

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

Poverty In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1445 Words | 6 Pages

Sinclair bases these struggles on things that happen to Jurgis and his family. One example that the author describes is how thousands of men wait outside the workplace just to get a chance at a job. “All day long the gates of the packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came, literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each other for a chance for life…. Sometimes their faces froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all together— but still they came, for they had no other place to go” (Sinclair 92). Another example the author displays is when Ona, Jurgis’s wife, dies after giving birth.

Read More

The Jungle Critical Analysis

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.

Read More

Cry Freetown Film Analysis

123 Words | 1 Pages

Cry Freetown which is created by Sorious Samura is a documentary that exposes the atrocities that was occurring in Sierra Leone. During that period, with the influence of some corrupted leaders, a group of rebels took over the city of Freetown and turned it into a bloody massacre. The documentary first started with Samura giving an insight of what might have been the cause of the civil war. According to him, all the chaos was over a mineral; Diamond brought hatred between people of the same nation. The rebels were killing, and abusing innocent people.

Read More

More about Life In The Lower Class Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document