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The Jungle Thesis

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Lives of Immigrants During the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution lead to a huge increase in the number of people immigrating to America to start fresh and work for enormous wealth and success. This American Dream was the dream of many immigrants, but it was often crushed shortly after their arrival. Alcohol, poverty, and people in positions of authority caused a lot of problems for these immigrants, but very little was done to help them. Alcohol was usually more of a self-inflicted issue, but there were some cases of alcohol being snuck into substances like medications that shouldn’t have alcohol. Poverty on the other hand was not something that anybody chose. Poverty was inflicted on many immigrants from people who took …show more content…

People in positions of authority were largely inflictors of poverty, because they took advantage of immigrants and their lack of familiarity with their surroundings, as well as paying them far less than was required for a decent lifestyle. Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle depicted each of these issues with great detail and clarity, as well as many other issues that plagued immigrants. The book takes place in the Chicago Packingtown district, the heart of the meatpacking industry. This is a rough line of work to be in, and the lives of those immigrants who kept the industry afloat were often miserable. Sinclair went so far as to describe these immigrants as “... victims of a relentless fate, cornered, trapped, in the grip of destruction” (Sinclair 86). All throughout the book, these immigrant’s suffering was brought into the public eye. Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, describes how alcoholism, poverty, and people in positions of …show more content…

In Packingtown, where the story takes place poverty is around every corner, and effects immigrants from all over who came to Chicago for a better life, but were sorely disappointed. This especially affected Ona, Marija, and Jurgis. When Ona gets pregnant a second time, she is already very ill from the pills she’s been taking and the womb-trouble she still suffers from with her last pregnancy, but the family can’t afford a midwife to assist her throughout the pregnancy. When Jurgis finally sweeps in and begs Madame Haupt, a well known and expensive midwife, she still isn’t in time to save Ona. And she dies shortly after the birth of the baby. Marija is affected in many ways throughout the course of the book, but one of the most significant examples is towards the end of the book, when the family has run out of money, and she is forced to become a prostitute. She has tried everything, but this is the only consistent income that is available to her after all of her suffering, there is no where else to turn. She came to America for a better life for er and her family, especially young Ona, but by the end of the story, poverty has changed her, and she realizes that they all would have had a much easier time if they had let Ona continue to see Phil Connor. Jurgis is affected by poverty all throughout the course of the book, but at one point turns to begging. He has tried everything, but he has run out of money,

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159 Words | 1 Pages

“With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great Packingtown swindles” (par.1). This statement from Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, introduces trust from a family because of their own personal knowledge . The Jungle, features an immigrant family trying to survive in 1900’s Chicago meat packing district. In the story, Sinclair’s goal is to expose the miserable life of immigrants who work in factories.

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1317 Words | 6 Pages

He wanted others to see poor conditions these workers had to indur to gain a very little amount of money. “ "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," he spoke. What Upton Sinclair described better than the working conditions or obstacles that millions of immigrants faced to produce money was, the meat that was being shipped out from Chicago to the people who were sitting and reading the book. Sinclair did not begin to write about socialism out of the blue though. He struggled to publish his books and thought about writing about socialism.

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1525 Words | 7 Pages

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair follows the life of Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and his family living in Chicago. Jurgis finds work at Brown's slaughterhouse and there he endures harsh working conditions as well as his family members. Ultimately he and family suffer many tragedies related to their work environments. While this book is a work of fiction it mirrors real life. The Jungle was published in 1906 during the Gilded Age.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

Corruption runs rampant in Packingtown, the town where Jurgis and his newly immigrated family work in the meatpacking industry. The Jungle’s heavy-handed symbolism alludes to the theme of corruption. For example, the animals represent the workers themselves; while the workers are the cattle, “each in a separate pen … leaving them with no room to turn around,” the wealthy capitalists are the “‘knockers,’ … watching for a chance to deal a blow” (Sinclair, 39). In other words, the capitalists are taking the workers lives

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601 Words | 3 Pages

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners.

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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.

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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.

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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

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1059 Words | 5 Pages

They soon realize that the conditions of the factory work environment are very harsh. In order to show Jurgis’s emotions towards the city of Packingtown Sinclair uses the metaphor “... all life, was to

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634 Words | 3 Pages

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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1064 Words | 5 Pages

Puritan Beliefs and the Resistance from the Native Americans Here I will discuss some of the Puritan beliefs revealed that led to tensions, conflicts, and concerns among the colonists and the Native Americans. The Puritans assumed when the smallpox epidemic hit it was God’s sign for them to take over the land. They also used it to justify taking over everything and robbing sacred Indian graves.

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1777 Words | 8 Pages

His novel The Jungle serves as a credible account of the harsh reality of migrant workers during the Gilded Age, just before the turn of the nineteenth century. The plight of foreign-born workers during this era

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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,

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1509 Words | 7 Pages

King Henry of England was in the bad mood for past month. He raged at everyone and spent the most of his time in his chambers. At the feasts, people saw lustful glances that he was sending to his former wife and how he ignored his current Queen. Many courtiers suspected that the reason for his unhappiness was the reconciliation of Edward Seymour and his wife. Anne Seymour, Lady Beauchamp was practically glowing with the happiness.

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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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