Upton Sinclair is a profound author that acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle. Which was written to expose the working conditions of the meatpacking industry. Becoming an “accidental muckraker” after writing the novel gained him credit to the truth of the novel based on the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Another author that portrayed the dark side of the society was Eric Schlosser, who brought light onto slaughterhouses, which were deemed as the most dangerous job. This event described the laboring conditions of what goes on inside of the slaughterhouses are an atrocious depiction of the working conditions of the time. Upton Sinclair “The Jungle (1906)” and Eric Schlosser “Fast Food Nation (2002)”, both incorporate the dangers of working in slaughterhouses. They both describe different views on the sinister sides of societies.
Sinclair wrote the novel to show the implausible conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago. Despite the fact, most readers were more disturbed with his introduction of health violations and unhygienic practices in the American meatpacking
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His novel led to Congress passing the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This led to a retort that President Theodore Roosevelt called for an investigation of the meatpacking industry. An agency of the U.S. Department of Congress later named the Food and Drug Administration now for the first time had the power to regulate the production of foods sold nationwide. Effects of the publication of Fast Food Nation helped OSHA enforce health and safety laws on the meatpacking industry. The most important message perceived through the excerpt would be how expendable every employee is to the meatpacking industry. Workers are only valued until they are broken by the physical labors and mental traumas
There was a kind of labors in the U.S. food industry stood on the floor with half an inch deep blood, and put up with the stench. But not only that, they worked faster, but earned less. In fact, they were immigrant labors, and this horrible treatment of them truly happened in the beginning of twenty centuries. The Jungle which was written by Upton Sinclair documented this inhuman treatment. However, a hundred years later, immigrants still suffer the harsh treatment in the modern food industry.
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.
The thesis of this review mainly consists of the issue with the school use of Upton Sinclairs’s “The Jungle”. The relevance with the book is that within this review there is a negative critique on how it is described to the students in the classroom. The author of this review, Louise Carroll Wade, argues that teachers have been kind to Sinclair. She explains that this novel was made to “call attention to the plight of Chicago packinghouse workers who had just lost a strike against the Beef Trust”. Also, she express her idea of how scholars have uncritically accepted Upton Sinclair's descriptions of the terrifying working and unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meat packing industry in 'The Jungle”, where in reality it was more skeptical.
Around seventy percent of Americans claim to hate their job, but The Jungle by Upton Sinclair puts into perspective how fortunate they really are (Adeline). This novel goes into detail about what was actually happening in the meat packing plants of 1906 and how it affected the employees’ mental and physical health. The workers in the meat packing plants had it much worse than those seventy percent today. They described their job with many negative words such as “agony”. The use of the word “agony” in The Jungle proves that the so-called employees were actually just slaves.
His first novel, Springtime and Harvest, was inspired by Sinclair’s troubled marriage, and he self-published this novel after receiving many rejections. Since then, he wrote novels based on the topics of Wall Street, Civil War, and autobiographies, but he did not become well-known until the publishing of The Jungle. The Jungle uncovers the mistreatment of the workers in the meatpacking industry, and the book vividly describes the cruelty to animals and unsanitary conditions, which shocked many people and changed the way they shopped for food. Even though Sinclair had many attempts in making his novels known, The Jungle ultimately made him famous for his brutal observations of the meatpacking industry, leading to changes in the
In Upton Sinclair’s expose on the meat industry, The Jungle, he writes about the unsanitary and dangerous conditions in the workplace. The author first begins with an eye-opening description of how the meat is made and packed; he then describes the sickening odor that would fill the room. To conclude he details how the workers would need to find a way to sell anything by writing of their schemes of using spoiled meat to sell. Sinclair’s purpose is to expose the conditions of the meatpacking industry and how it was harmful not only to the workers, but also the consumers. He seems to have a large, general audience in mind because the majority
Instead of honing in on the social aspect, and the workers in general, many scholars and students are taught that the main purpose of this novel was to unveal the meat-packing conditions and the lack of policies and standards regarding the health of the public. To add, Barrett states, “...the slaughterhouses and the fate of the animals consigned there symbolized a much greater human tragedy being played out in factories and urban slums throughout the world” (xiii). This perfectly sums up that the initial goal of Sinclair’s writing was intended to emphasize and focus in on the hearts of humans, but rather as previously mentioned, ended up hitting them in the stomach, in relation to the unsanitary and disturbing conditions that America’s food was being processed. Another valid part was the lack of emphasis on American’s social life. This served as a prime weakness that Barrett explained, which he states, “The social and cultural lives of the immigrants disintegrate under the pressures of daily life in an urban slum” (xix).
That same day, The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was created. This act required the makers of prepared food and medicine to host government inspection as well. Overall, these acts have now been a reassurance to the public that meat and other things are in good
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
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
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.
Innocent Belief Famously known for his novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair changed American life in the early 1900s without a doubt through his literature. However, many don’t realize that Sinclair reformed American life in more than one instance, through more than one book. At times, he even reached beyond his realm of literature to discuss other needed adjustments. Besides the serendipitous changes he created for the meat packaging industry, Sinclair’s other actions throughout his life are, subjectively, important to American history, according to Anthony Arthur. In his biography, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Arthur reveals his bias towards Sinclair, while supplying a relevant nature to his writing across an in-depth review of Sinclair’s
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
Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle is a novel, which affected the food industry in 1900’s but also in America today. People have learned over the years the truths about the food industry, revealed through Sinclair’s detailed evidence. Sinclair meant to aim at the public’s heart but instead he shot straight at their stomachs. One would easily be convinced to never again buy or eat meat again. Fortunately, people have seen changes from 1906 and have been currently trying to repair the Food Industry.
Camila Casanova U.S. History 1302: S67 Mr. Isaac G. Pietrzak February 9, 2018 Critical Review: The Jungle Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.