Ashwin Kumar
Ms. Bergith Weber
AP English Language/4
March 17, 2018
Independent Reading Lodestar
Title: The title of this book is The Jungle.
Author: The author of this book is Upton Sinclair.
Original Date of Publication: Upton Sinclair published this book originally in 1906, but numerous editions have been published even in the 21st century that censor some its graphic content and violence. The time period was the progressive era in the early twentieth century.
Genre: This book is in the genre of political and historical fiction, as it portrays the horrors of the meat-packing industry with a few fictional characters.
Historical Context:
Upton Sinclair was a muckraker, which meant he was a journalist who exposed the harsh societal norms
…show more content…
But life takes a turn for the worse when Jurgis sprains his ankle and is out of work for months, causing his relatives to abandon the family and his job to be given to someone else without pay. Eventually, he has to work in the fertilizer plant - the most dangerous place - and his wife is forced to sleep with her boss while he is gone. When Jurgis finds that she is pregnant, he attacks the boss and is thrown in jail. He comes out to find his wife dying of premature birth along with the child. After he gets injured again, he becomes a beggar on the streets of Chicago.
Eventually, after being taken advantage of many times - even losing a hundred dollar bill to a bartender - Jurgis finds himself in a socialist rally. He likes the idea, and gets a job at a socialist hotel, where the novel ends optimistically as he urges more people to convert to socialism. Sinclair’s purpose is to illustrate the theme of the plight of the immigrant workers, and all of the plot relates back to this struggle. Every event adds to Jurgis’s misery, and Sinclair reveals that socialism is the only hope to get out of the intensely unfair and harsh capitalist
…show more content…
It grew darker all the time, and upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green. But along with the thickening smoke, they began to notice another circumstance, a strange, pungent odor; this odor, some might have called it sickening, was unpleasant, but their taste in odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it was curious” (Sinclair 20).
2. The two devices of anadiplosis and foreshadowing combine in this short passage to display the naivety of Jurgis’s family, as they have no idea about the reality conditions in Packingtown. Sinclair repeats “odor” (Sinclair 20) twice to convey the disruptive nature of the factory, and the anadiplosis magnifies the effects that the smell has on the people and the area. The odor is the most noticeable effect of the slaughter of animals in the stockyard, and the fact that the word is repeated three times in one sentence reveals how ignorant the family is to the harshness of the situation. Foreshadowing has a large presence as well, as Sinclair hints that there are disastrous activities occurring in the town by depicting the factory’s effects on the surrounding regions. As the family approaches the city, they fail to realize that the sky is graying, and the grass is not as lush as before. They somehow do not realize that the strange odor is abnormal, and the worsening conditions are key to Sinclair’s foreshadowing.
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.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was a novel popularized and published during the Progressive Era with the purpose of exposing the horrific working conditions of the Chicago meat industry. Sinclair exposed the unsanitary practices of the meat industry and the dehumanization of the workers. The harsh realities written in Sinclair’s novel reached the hearts of many Americans furthering the push of many progressive activist’s demands. In the end this created an everlasting lawful change with the help of President Theodore Roosevelt.
The book was instrumental in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. These laws were passed in response to the book’s depiction of the unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry. The laws were designed to improve the safety and quality of food products in the United States. The Jungle also had an impact on the political beliefs of many Americans. Sinclair’s message of socialism as a solution to the social and economic problems in America resonated with many people.
“He must have a drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food that came with it.” (Sinclair 277). With his profession of a strikebreaker, he is expected to go out drinking with people and soon, that is what drives Jurgis. He lives to drink. After Jurgis returns from the country, he falls into a Socialist group and works at a Socialist populated hotel.
Jurgis gains a new perspective of everything around him and everything that has happened. The main character Jurgis Rudkus is an immigrant coming to America. He searches for a job to provide money for his wife and parents. In the article Schema Criticism by Mark Bracher, he emphasizes that, “Jurgis is the prototypical image of autonomy. He is powerful, exuberant, striking figure who towers above the other workers” (32).
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was published in 1906 in New York. In this heart-wrenching novel by Upton Sinclair, a Lithuanian hard-working man, Jurgis Rudkus, goes through various hardships after he emigrated to the United States. The Jungle confronts real issues in the new United States with a unique approach of the cycle of despair from capitalism, and the harm of the grotesque sanitary conditions of the meat-packing industry. In Chapters 18-19, Jurgis Rudkus gets released from jail after serving 30 days for the assault of Ona’s boss, Phil Connor. Connor sexually assaulted and harassed Ona.
Jurgis Rudkus, the main character in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, has a very rough journey when he moves to America from Lithuania. He faces many hardships and they're difficult for anyone to endure. Throughout the novel Jurgis is put through the justice/prison system multiple times, and each time he experienced something new, whether it be the unjust treatment he received, the food he was served, or even the condition of his cell and daily life there. The novel portrayed the justice system as an unfair one. They treat immigrants and the poor unfairly.
“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.
The Unfair Treatment of Immigrants in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Imagine going somewhere new, far away and ending up in a bad situation with no way out. That’s how Jurgis and his family felt when they left their home country of Lithuania to come to America to pursue their dreams of wealth. Their world was quickly turned upside down when they realized that the deck was stacked against them in Chicago’s unfair system, which was designed to leave them trapped. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair will bring you into the world of manipulation and poverty in Chicago during the 1900s.
This story includes a lot of dialogue that is mostly informal. The characters use words such as “whuzzit”, “hassome”, and “whuzzamatter” to show a more authentic side. Although Sinclair tells the story from an outside perspective and uses sophisticated language, the dialogue is mostly slang. This makes the characters more believable considering the time period they were in and the lack of education. Sinclair uses grotesque imagery about the killing of animals in factories which contribute to the purpose of pushing towards food safety.
There are many other traps around America that deceive the immigrants because their weakness of not knowing English and the desire of getting a great life in America which lead them unpreparedly get fooled by the businessmen. These traps prevented the immigrants from leaving America, because of the significant amount of debt that they have to pay each month, which forced them to keep working and become the slave of this capitalistic society in America. Unfortunately, even they work very hard, in most of the time they will not get anything in return, such that Jurgis’s family cannot even keep the house at the of the book and many of family members’ health destroyed by the harsh working conditions in the
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.
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 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.
The big business owners wanted to produce as mass of a production of meat as possible, so the quality of the meat was ultimately the last of their priorities. Sinclair wanted to make the people aware of the conditions of the factories and how series the issue really was. Both socially and politically, Upton Sinclair had culminating intentions to inform the American people of the evils of capitalism and sought to promote socialism in hope to alter the gap between the working class and the middle-upper class. (thesis) Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to improve the huge gaps of the social classes in America during this time. His intention was to improve social aspects, because it was the only way that issues in the country would improve. .