I have a 1st edition copy of "The Jungle" written by Upton Sinclair and published by Doubleday & Page in 1906. The book binding is very solid. The hard cover is in good shape with some wear on the white detailing on the cover and spine.
When Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, a book about the terrible environment of the meat-packing factories in Chicago, he hoped to motivate reform in immigrant working conditions and promote socialism. Instead, what shocked readers the most was the sordid surroundings in which their future meals were prepared. Sinclair 's audience saw these conditions as a threat to themselves, and that energized reform in the meat-packing industry. What scared audiences the most was how real this threat was to their lives. As can be witnessed in the results of Sinclair 's crusade, the most effective propaganda is that which rouses the visceral survival instinct.
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.
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.
The Jungle is a story that revolves around the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his family, the Lithuanian immigrant who came to America to lead a better life and worked at meatpacking plants of early 20th century Chicago. The story showcases the hardship that they underwent due to the harsh and bad working condition, poverty, starvation and being cheated by unjust people agents, eventually losing all their money. The Jungle provides us ways to look at the unfettered capitalism that prevailed in the early 20th century. This book also exposes the corruption, inequality, unjustness, sickness and slavery that existed in the society.
During the era of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the book soared in popularity— for numerous reasons. While Sinclair’s original intent was to expose the poor working conditions of the working class citizens, it spread further than that in its readers' hearts. His book went on to expose the food industry, and how horrid the things were that were put in the meat to be consumed by unsuspecting individuals. This discovery led to a movement of people demanding better food conditions and health standards worldwide.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle “hit [the readers] in their stomach” rather than in their hearts like he had hoped to. Steve Trott thoroughly writes about Upton Sinclair’s successes and failures as a writer in his piece, “Upton Sinclair and The Jungle.” Sinclair had written the novel in hopes of drawing attention to the “appalling conditions and squalor of wage-laborers under capitalism… [b]ut his objective was lost on the public, overshadowed by unsanitary conditions and inadequate regulation in the meat processing plants” (Trott 2). Because Sinclair based the novel off of a fictional character, Jurgis Rudkus, his reliability fell short.
Upton Sinclair used the words, “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” to describe the reaction his novel, The Jungle received after publication. Sinclair was disappointed that the political point of his novel was overshadowed by the public’s outcry over food production. Sinclair originally intended to show how American factory workers were wrongfully treated but the people focused on the food safety. The Jungle illustrated the unsanitary and unethical standards of how meat was produced throughout factories in the United States. After Sinclair’s book was published the public started to demand new reforms in the meat industry.
When Upton Sinclair, a progressive era muckraker, wrote The Jungle in 1906, he was attempting to bring knowledge of the horrific conditions in Packingtown to the average citizen. His revelations on the terrors of Packingtown helped to slowly improve the lives of the immigrants. Sinclair’s pursuit of knowledge relates to the slowly growing knowledge of the characters in The Jungle. Throughout the story the characters find themselves in many tragic circumstances that could have been more easily avoided if they had been more aware of their surroundings. The immigrants are full of a false hope for success that disillusions the reality of their life.
Enjoyed from little league baseball games to outdoor family barbecues, hot dogs have grown to be one of America’s most iconic food products. Due to the ambiguity of its ingredients and manufacturing processes, however, hot dogs have also been known to stir up feelings of disgust and unease among consumers. To address this obscurity among consumers, a thorough examination of the manufacturing processes and ingredients is necessary to separate the myths from the facts. The average American hot dog holds a variety of ingredients. Although hot dogs are known to be made of some sort of meat, most of the ambiguity and suspicion rest on the kind of meat used and the processes of how they are manufactured.
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
During the late 19th century, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle where he romanticized the notion of American culture. This exaggeration enticed immigrants to travel to America in an effort to start a new life as exemplified by Jurgis Rudkus and his family. Immigrants traveled due to their high hopes and expectations for finding more opportunities and climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. They allowed unrestrained capitalism to take advantage of them which ultimately led to inhumane living and working conditions. With its abuse of the immigrant workers, the system of capitalism was a major downfall in society.
Big corporations and businesses have been thriving in America since the late nineteenth century. The definition of the term “Big business” is “an economic group consisting of large profit-making corporations especially with regard to their influence on social or political policy”(“Big Business”). Some big corporations include the steel companies, the oil companies, and the railroad industry. Some modern-day businesses include Apple and Android, and oil companies today.
Throughout the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, many symbols are used to portray ideas. The most prominent symbol in the book simply put is the 'animals. ' Upton Sinclair uses the relation of animals and their coherent descriptions, however vivid, to highlight and add on to his purpose of exposing the capitalistic exploitation of immigrants. Sinclair continually alludes to particular characters and groups of ethnicities through his animalistic descriptions. In direct relation to Social Darwinism, the immigrants are the prey, and the capitalistic elite is predators.
Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle depicted many disturbing social injustices immigrants had to endure at the time during the 19th century. Jurgis and his family moved to America in search of a better life, but upon arrival the harsh reality set in that America was not what everyone said it to be. They suffered many hardships. The working conditions, when they could find employment, were terrible. They battled discrimination, they were grossly taken advantage of, and survival from day to day in Packingtown slowly worked to deteriorate their faith.
