. Also, with his symbolic representation of hogs in the slaughterhouse, Sinclair depicts how the undeserved pain felt by humans may be a result of their ineptitude to flourish in a society constantly pushing them down. Due to Jurgis’s job working in the slaughterhouse, he is inspired to question:
Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth… where they [hogs] requited all this suffering? … And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. (Sinclair 29-30)
Critic Timothy Cook, sympathizes with the Rudkus family in his article "Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle and Orwell 's Animal Farm: A Relationship Explored" by declaring:
The Jungle is written to demolish a myth, but in this case it is the opposing, and older, one of America as the Promised Land…This myth had brought Jurgis from his native, semifeudal Lithuania…to a system in which he soon finds himself as helpless, as uncomprehending, as the hogs… (Cook 697)
Author Upton Sinclair uses the slaughterhouse hogs to symbolize European immigrants, and how they are seen as helpless creatures, when in reality they all have their own sense of individuality despite the pain they endure. By using the hogs
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In The Jungle, the difference between hard work and success is the circumstances found around oneself. A man can have no responsibilities because his family inheritance and social ranking is enough to support him or he can be a man who only knows persistence but still cannot attain enough to keep his family going. The “American Dream” has given many foreigners false conceptions of what the transition to America is really like. For some it may be smooth sailing, but for most, prosperity is nearly