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The Jungle Analysis

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Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Document Analysis The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!” (Sinclair 31). Written as an indirect …show more content…

However, it doesn’t take much into account the striking realism of the danger that was prevalent in much of the book. “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.” (Sinclair 196). Sinclair, in a way, didn’t even realize what such powerful things he was describing in his text at the time because again, it wasn’t his main objective with the novel. Before much of this was viewed as one of the larger issues with American food processing, it was more than likely written to satirize many portions of the book to embellish Sinclair’s initial point on …show more content…

Change in many aspects not just related to labor rights or food safety like mentioned in The Jungle. However, it is interesting to see just how this argument was brought up, especially in a time where such types of activism were more direct and somewhat aggressive for change. The Jungle takes a somewhat hesitant and indirect stance on their arguments because of the political fiction that takes place in the novel. The progressive era was a period that had such a high want to change that many people would take to striking or even more extreme measures such as riots. I find this type of demeanor very interesting, being the fact that an entirely different approach was taken through literature, reiterating the notion that it is essentially fiction literature

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Sinclair says: “There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. 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.” (Chapter 14). This quote tells how the meat was kept before it was sold to the people and that the company cared nothing about the health of others.

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The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair and published in 1906. I chose this book because it’s been mentioned in multiple History classes I’ve taken. I took it upon interest mainly because it is about the brutal and unfair treatment of immigrants in labor and because it exposed the meat industry. (it exposed both). Sinclair strives to expose the danger in capitalism by vividly describing and exposing the ranging and brutal treatment of immigrant laborers who searched to live the American dream but found misfortune instead.

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Subject: The Jungle mainly focuses on poor living conditions for the working class in 20th century Chicago. I learned how corrupt politics in this time period were, how gross the meatpacking industry used to be, and how hard immigrants had it when they came to America. This text is controversial because it gives suggestion that socialism is the better government system. This would split the sides into those for capitalism and those for socialism. Occasion: The Jungle was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair.

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Progressive reformers worked to improve the social, political, and economic problems in American society. Throughout this time, muckrakers helped reformers by revealing injustices to Americans through journalism, books, campaigns, photographs, and political cartoons. Poor working conditions, low quality of consumer products, and inferior democracy were present in American life during the Progressive Era; reforms such as state actions, the Meat Inspection Act, and Direct Primary helped to eliminate these corruptions. An issue society faced during the Progressive Era was poor working conditions. In Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, he writes that if a person found anyone who uses knives in this factory,

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Upton Sinclair is recognized today as one of the most influential writers during the birth and largest period of industrialization in America: The Industrial Revolution. He is known most by his incredible, life-changing novel, The Jungle, which was written and published in 1906. The book was written to explain the amount of power and control that big businesses had during this era over the average workingman. “The novel’s story of the destruction of an immigrant Lithuanian family by the forces of corporate greed and poverty is a tale of horror almost beyond tragedy”(1110). Throughout the novel, Sinclair shows a series of unfortunate events that the Lithuanian family encounters once they move to America in hope of finding a life of living the “American Dream.”

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Matthew DeBacker Mr. Shinabarger AS American History 19 October 2015 Corruption in The Jungle The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, was a very impactful book during the industrialization age and still impacts people today. It is considered one of the most important books in the Industrialization Age in America. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker and wanted to draw attention the the terrible things that went on in the meatpacking industry. So he highlighted several key themes such as poverty, capitalism, and immigration during that time period

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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.

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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

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While Upton Sinclair was writing what was soon to be a bestseller and a book that is still used in literature classes to this day, he kept in mind that he wanted to portray the exploited lives of workers for the meatpacking industries. He really emphasized that they were substantially underpaid for the harsh working conditions they were put in. What the public emphasized on was how the meat was being treated, this caused an uproar throughout the country. It was never Sinclair’s goal to muck rack and expose what the meatpacking industries were doing. Now to this day Sinclair’s, The Jungle, is known for being a classic muckraking tale.

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The book was instrumental in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. These laws were passed in response to the book’s depiction of the unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry. The laws were designed to improve the safety and quality of food products in the United States. The Jungle also had an impact on the political beliefs of many Americans. Sinclair’s message of socialism as a solution to the social and economic problems in America resonated with many people.

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Though best known for his muckraking efforts that helped to end the Gilded Age, Upton Sinclair wrote nearly a hundred books in his lifetime. From a young age his mother encouraged in him a love of reading; when he could, Sinclair could be found reading for up to fourteen hours a day. However, his childhood was marked by poverty and his father's raging alcoholism. His mother took a strong sense of morality against his father’s drinking and of all types of sinning. These strict morals implanted in him made the socialist party very appealing.

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Immigrants faced harsh living and working conditions, racial strife, poverty, as well as social class issues. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explores many of these hardships immigrants had to face through the lives of Lithuanian Immigrants. Throughout his novel, Sinclair focuses on poverty and thoughts of what America was supposed to be like to portray hardships immigrants faced when coming to America.

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The Bosses squeezed and drained the life of those men. In the book The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair he described the life of a struggling family try to work and stay alive in the filth. The working conditions in the factories were unsafe, unsanitary and people made little. The purpose of this book was for people to become socialist other than capitalist.

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The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair written in 1906, tells of inhumane conditions that immigrants faced when coming to industrialized cities of the United States. The book begins with the wedding of Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus to help show the reader how even during these times such as this, immigrants are still mistreated. Their wedding causes them to realize that they have one hundred and more in debt. Jurgis, who believes greatly in the American dream, tells his wife that he will find a job quickly and get them out of their debt. He, as well as other members of his family members go out to find work to get them out of their debts, but whenever they find a job something always seems to go wrong, forcing them to lose their jobs.

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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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