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Upton Sinclair Symbolism

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“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie” (Upton Sinclair). A revolutionary figure that will be addressed in this essay is the one and only Upton Sinclair. Through most of his life, starting from the age of 14, Sinclair was invested in voicing his opinions through fiction (Badertscher). He did this by taking a real-life issue and integrating it into the plot of his literature while a point of view in that literature is given to a fictional character representing something or someone related to the real-life issue (“Upton Sinclair’s”). Although Upton Sinclair didn’t intend to, he improved the meatpacking industry’s cleanliness and ethics by revealing …show more content…

The meatpacking industries carelessness towards their workers are physically endangering them daily. “Men who used knives on the sped-up assembly lines frequently lost fingers. Men who hauled 100-pound hunks of meat crippled their backs” (“Upton Sinclair’s”). Through the repetitive endangerment of these businesses’ workers it has highlighted the industry’s unnatural greed and lack of empathy. These damages that are inflicted on their workers can be critical, life-changing or even lethal. Mr. Sinclair’s book provided more distressing news of the terrible practices in this industry taught to the workers so that more meat can be distributed for profit. “He wrote that workers would process dead, injured, and diseased animals after regular hours when no meat inspectors were around” (“Upton Sinclair’s”). Meatpacking industries provides more meat for their customers purely for profit. This causes the industry to be influenced to sell its meat, no matter the condition it is in. Packaged meat put in revolting conditions were brought to light, thanks to “The Jungle” and the customers of these businesses were …show more content…

People of America were utterly disgusted by the uncleanliness of the production of the food they ate. “I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” (“Muckrakers” 121). America felt betrayed and were confused by the lack of empathy or care given by major meatpacking companies. Public outcry over the contamination of their food was not fully supported by the person that incited it because he intended for the attention to go towards the terrible conditions that the workers in production industries go through. Their customers sought to seek regulation of the meatpacking industry due to the contamination of their food. “The middle-class readers who bought the book demanded government action to ensure the safety of their food supply” (“Muckrakers” 120). Justice was attempting to hinder the vile practices of this industry through the public’s outcry. They felt threatened by the industry’s unregulated actions and needed authorities to change this. That traitorous industry underestimated the length its consumers were willing to go to fix their destructive

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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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1585 Words | 7 Pages

In the novel were references to rats and workers falling into tubs of meats, which inspired disgust and helped to bring the Meat Inspection of 1906 to life. Since then the public has come to assume that meat is inspected according to government standards to protect consumers, but much evidence indicates that throughout the time bribery of government meat inspectors and deception has resulted in the imposing of much unhealthy meat on the American public. In the end of the 20th century, reports of unclean conditions in meatpacking plants, marketing of unsafe mat, and paid-off inspectors were still imminent, and millions of Americans were suffering from food poisoning as a result of such

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1184 Words | 5 Pages

Sinclair worked undercover in a meatpacking plant to gather information firsthand, before he began writing the book. Its influence on the labor practices and regulations governing the food industry cannot be understated. It tackles subjects as varied as the poor living conditions of the immigrants, exploitation of cheap labor by industrialists, and the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago. The descriptions of the disgusting processes that were conducted in the meatpacking plants made for shocking reading and turned the book into a bestseller. The President Teddy Roosevelt ordered an investigation into the lack of sanitation in meatpacking plants and caused the creation of legislation governing the food industry in the form of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906.

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422 Words | 2 Pages

In the reading “The Jungle” Upton Sinclair explained the harsh working conditions of the meat industry. Workers such as butchers, beef luggers, and wool pickers payed a huge price for there work. The priced payed for their work included swollen knuckles, lingering odor, exhaustion, disease, tons of cuts/scrapes, wearing or the fingernails, and the dissolving of fingers due to acidity. Just as back during the end of the 19th century as the industry was growing, jobs had harsh working conditions as well such as lack in cleanliness and working in no air conditioning factories.

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704 Words | 3 Pages

This book exposes the grim realities for workers in this era: “One notorious passage describes the packinghouse’s dangers to its workers” (12). This piece addresses the awful working conditions and the negative impacts of the industry, and this was the turning point for the nation. People were shocked, and this was constantly brought up to the point where it was necessary for Roosevelt to address. There were concerns involving the complete power that the meat industry held, and Roosevelt held great power to control society and provide a sense of tranquility. When considering the bill, Roosevelt aimed to balance many interests and intertwine people so they felt as though they had a voice in this process.

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709 Words | 3 Pages

In the meatpacking plants workers have to perform dangerous tasks and problems as the absence of heat in the winter or conditioning air in summer, make the situation worst. ‘’Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of

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778 Words | 4 Pages

In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Jurgis and his family attempt to survive in a malicious society. In this jungle of a town, rotten meat is being packaged in order to save money. Throughout the novel, the immigrants are faced with greedy capitalists who take advantage of the family’s ignorance and naivety in order to make money. The symbols of corruption, a jungle-like setting, and the tension between family and a work-based lifestyle transparently contribute to the unifying theme of anti-capitalism. In other words, this book is not art; this book is propaganda.

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451 Words | 2 Pages

In this novel, Upton Sinclair had one main goal in mind, to display the abuse of immigrants who worked in the meat packing industry in the early 20th century. The immigrants who worked in this industry were often exploited because of their lack of English language skills and unfamiliarity with American laws and customs as a whole. “They use everything about the hog except the squeal” (Sinclair 38), Sinclair writes this to suggest the workers are treated like animals because every single part of their body is used, but their voice. The conditions were extremely dangerous and unsanitary, consequently demoralizing every worker. They had long hours, low pay, and ordinarily frequent injuries.

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786 Words | 4 Pages

The book, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection describes how Upton Sinclair stated how he had hoped to draw his readers’ attention to “the conditions under which toilers get their bread,” and how there are, “corrupt federal meat inspectors, unsanitary slaughter houses, tubercular cattle, and the packers’ unscrupulous business practices”(Document 4). The authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle are expressing how meat factory workers are making terrible, unsanitary food. They’re pointing out that not even the meat inspectors care for the condition the meat is in. In other words, just as long as they’re making a profit, the inspectors could care less about the meat’s quality. However, consumer products soon took a turn for the better when the Meat Inspection Act was finally passed.

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724 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the novel, Upton Sinclair shows the readers the harsh working conditions during the early nineteen hundreds. The owners of big meat companies would take advantage of their authority over the workers and treat them with no respect. The workers had strict rules such as taking off an hours pay if a worker is one minute late to work or having no days off. In the beginning of the novel, Ona requests a day off for her wedding with Jurgis but her boss refuses. Not only that, but they do not know what is in their medicine.

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1060 Words | 5 Pages

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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1850 Words | 8 Pages

From Slaughterhouse To Slaughtering American’s Health Paul McCartney once said that “if slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be vegetarian”. With such claim Paul McCartney aimed to bring attention to the lack of knowledge the general public has about what goes on behind the closed doors of these slaughterhouses. He claims that if the public was exposed to the facts, they would stop eating the meat produced in these places. In this paper, I explore a more broad but similar topic, the lack of transparency by some of the biggest food corporations and the lack of information the general population has about the health benefits, or rather the lack of such, in the majority of mass produced processed food. I will explore this topic by using various works such as Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory(1964), The Jungle(1906) by Upton Sinclair, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation(2001), the film Super Size Me (2004), a nonfiction piece titled “The Way We Eat Now” (2004) by Craig Lambert, and the word “abattoir”.

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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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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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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.

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