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Who Is Jurgis And His Family In Ayn Rand's The Jungle?

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The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkis and his family. They immigrated from Lithuania to find a better life in America. Their story is a one of tragedy, suffering and poverty. They find their way to Chicago and the meatpacking plants, where they face many hardships and difficulties. Workers at the plants are not paid well, are overworked and face dangerous conditions, but Jurgis has no trouble getting a job there. At first, Jurgis and his family live in a rat-infested boarding house. Their neighborhood, called Packingtown, sits between a large pit for sewage and a garbage dump. Jurgis and the family decide to put their money together and buy a house. Right away their problems begin as they have trouble making their house payments. All the adults must now work to help provide for the family. When Jurgis gets hurt and can’t work, the children must leave school and find jobs. After a series of tragedies, including near starvation, illness, several deaths in the family, and some time in jail. Life eventually changes Jurgis as he is robbed of his strength, health and spirit. He is forced to live a life not fit for an animal. Unfortunately he doesn’t understand what is destroying his life. He looses his sense of compassion and humanity as he becomes bitter. Jurgis leaves Packingtown and becomes a hobo. Jurgis eventually …show more content…

Jurgis is described as, "he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands" and "great black eyes with beetling brows." He is physically strong and can easily carry 250 pounds. It is important to know that Jurgis is very strong, it plays a significant part in influencing his outlook and his life. The most prominent features of Jurgis’s personality are his physical presence and his simple attitude. Jurgis is also arrogant, tender and loving with his family, narrow minded and possessed of a temper. He has his youth, strength and health, he is very positive and

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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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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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The Wretched Lives of Workers America during the early 20th Century was a time full of selfish capitalists and the poverty-stricken workers who paid for their success. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, captures this perfectly with the portrayal of Jurgis Rudkus. Jurgis is a newly immigrated person to the United States with his family when they realize they need jobs and a place to live. Throughout the book, Jurgis finds new jobs such as in meat factories and fertilizer plants but loses them as well.

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Jurgis becomes very involved in his rebellion after he is fired and has a lot of free time. Sinclair writes, “These midnight hours were fateful to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawing and his unbelief” to the things that have happened to him since he arrived in America (167).Jurgis gets himself into prison by trying to stand up for himself and his wife when matters are taken out of

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Upton Sinclair displays his dexterous writing ability in one of his most widely familiar books “The Jungle”. Throughout this unique masterpiece Sinclair broadcast multiple conditions which one today would not know to judge from its content as a horror or jest. He goes about this by storytelling the life of an immigrant family. These conditions vary from poor living setups to the stomach turning health violations undertook by the meat industry. Overall imposing his theory that the heavily sold illusion of the american dream wasn’t at all what it was made out to be.

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The kids can not find out where to go because the jungle is so big and crowded. “He left the path and entered the jungle, keeping close to the enclosure 's netted wall”(Ridley). This makes the reader wonder what is in the middle of the jungle and why he has to stay on the netted wall. The chaos expressed by nature makes people have troubles with each other resulting in the topic of Person

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The Jungle follows a young Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkis and his teenage wife Ona. Together, the couple struggles to provide for themselves and for Ona’s family. Jurgis maintains a job

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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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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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Every crisis Jurgis’s family encountered was primarily caused by money which the factory owner, the real estate, the doctor, and even the bartender fed on by taking advantage of the poor people. In the freezing winter, Jurgis himself lose his strength and became a wounded animal physically and mentally. Indeed, many times in the novel, Sinclair symbolized a human with a wounded animal, “…plunging like a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage” (75), “…helpless as a wounded animal, target of unseen enemies” (92), “…like a wounded animal in the forest; …forced to compete with his enemies upon the unequal term” (157). The same fate went with every other member of the family, especially Ona, she was always described as fragile as hunted prey as such she usually found herself in a position she struggles to help her family. However, she was full of love and support for her husband; it was not exaggerated to say she was the mental healing for Jurgis and a treasure that he swore to protect.

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The Jungle is a book about a young couple and several relatives that immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania in search for a better life. The young couple, Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, hold their wedding in a bar in an area of Chicago known as Packingtown. Packingtown is the center of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. It is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is very difficult to find a job. Jurgis and Ona discover, at their reception, that they are more than one hundred dollars in debt with the saloonkeeper.

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Families that are poor or have a low income are more likely to commit crimes for the purpose of their own needs to survive. “It is a fact that neighborhoods where the poor are concentrated are more prone to high crime rates, and poor residents are the most common victims of crimes” (1). The best explanation for this is that poorer people have the same needs as a regular middle-class citizen. The poor citizens need certain things to help him or her live a healthy life, such as healthcare, food stamps, and more employment options. One may argue that healthcare is too expensive and that food stamps have been taken away from many people.

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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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