For most of us, we take life for granted; We forget about all the everyday things like hot food, readily available running water, and a climate controlled house, all things that we take advantage of on a daily basis. All of these things, basic necessities, that immigrants struggled to keep if they ever did gain them in the first place. For the most part Upton Sinclair portrayed the life of an average citizen who started their life as an immigrant very well. Whether it be the extremely poor working conditions people were forced to deal with, the everyday struggles that they had to confront on a daily basis, or even the political corruption that the cities were once plagued with, Sinclair’s story matches up to what actually happened in history …show more content…
Upton Sinclair in his book “The Jungle”depicted the everyday struggles that immigrants like Jurgis had to go through really well and for the most part historically correct. To understand more about “The Jungle”, you need to understand more about Sinclair and his life. Sinclair had experienced some of the things he wrote about firsthand, once such thing was the widespread poverty epidemic. This experience of poverty gave Sinclair a first hand experience as to what others in the same situation were going though. Sinclair’s past is a difficult one because he had an alcoholic dad who wasn't well off, while on the other hand he had a mother who had wealth relative that he often visited (NYTIMES). All of these things attributed to Sinclair’s view of society and what was wrong with it. There was a time in the Jungle when Jurgis realise that things were not in his favor and this is something that Sinclair had specifically experience when he saw the differences between the rich and the poor. “Jurgis could see all the truth now- …show more content…
This was often the case when people got injured, except they usually didn't get their jobs back. There was such a demand for jobs in a city like Chicago that an injured person was useless to the industries and was easily replaceable with a fresh replacement. Injuries were relatively common when you are working in an industry such as meatpacking, Jurgis once twisted his ankle trying to escape from a rogue steer that bad broken free from the killing
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.
Imagine travelling to a foreign country, knowing no one, being unable to speak the native language, not even having a place to stay the night. The immigrant family arrives in America with hopes of a better life, instead facing extreme challenges, struggling to survive in the Chicago stockyards. The reader experiences the tough life of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian man doing all he can in order to keep his family alive. From beginning to end, the reader witnesses the accounts and situations the family is living through, while working at the meat factory and other jobs they have to work as an attempt to stay alive. In The Jungle, author Upton Sinclair uses vivid imagery catering to the readers senses, in order to present how employers treated immigrants
After the 1906 publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, American citizens were shocked and confused. An instant hit, the book made Sinclair an immediate celebrity. His most famous quote was pertaining to the impact that The Jungle had on society, he states, “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” The groundbreaking novel unearthed the lives of poor immigrants living and working in the Chicago stockyards. The story's main character, Jurgis Rudkus, is a Lithuanian immigrant who came to America with the dream of living a happy and content life with his family.
The Jungle Paper The Jungle is a novel written by Upton Sinclair. It is about a Lithuanian family that immigrates to America during the early 1900’s. When they arrive in Packingtown, Chicago, they are hopeful and excited for their new life. In reality, life in America was not all that it was advertised to be.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, is set in Chicago in the early 1900’s, during the height of social reform known as the Progressive era. The population of Chicago had grown substantially, from 29,000 in 1850 to 1.7million in 1900, due to the influx of immigrants in search of the “American dream”. America was the destination of all in search of freedom, equality and higher wages. The dream promised success in exchange for hard work, determination and morality. The reality was that the “American dream” was just an illusion.
Furious with grief, Jurgis takes the rest of the family’s money and goes to drink his sorrows away. Living with the purpose of supporting his sole son, Jurgis works harder than ever to support his family, even though it means only visiting on the weekends. One tragic weekend, Jurgis returns home to discover that his son has died by drowning in the streets of mud. With nothing keeping him in the broken city, Jurgis heads out to the plains, doing odd jobs for meals and stealing or picking fruit when he is turned down. Jurgis refuses to work for any man for a committed time, and soon begins to feel the stresses of city life fade away.
In the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the main characters are Jurgis, Elzbieta, Marija, little Stanislovas, Ona, old Antanas and baby Antanas. Throughout the book, there is a constant theme of destruction due to the family moving to America from Lithuania. This shaped their fate, actions, and characteristics. The family was trapped in the American Jungle having no control in what happened to them and demolished their lives; history repeating itself. Historical events prove the suffering America brings.
This causes Jurgis to spend a lot of their money on alcohol in order to allow himself to “see clearly” again. Sinclair shows how the poor reacted to the neglect, by making Jurgis become a drunk who abused his family 's money. From the article “Realism and Revolution”, Walter Rideout remarks, “When illness destroys Jurgis 's great strength, he realizes that he has become a physical cast-off, one of the waste products of the plant, and must take the vilest job of all in the packing company 's fertilizer plant.” (Rideout) As Jurgis lives through his life of poverty, he becomes weaker and weaker until he becomes worthless to employers. This causes Jurgis to have little self-worth, or as Rideout puts, Jurgis believes he is “one of the waste products of the plant” (Rideout).
The Jungle is a naturalistic fiction book written by the famous muckraker Upton Sinclair. The book follows a poor Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis and was made to expose the horrors of the meat packing industry in Chicago, and the life of an immigrant. Upton Sinclair believed that capitalism has undermined the American value of liberty, but capitalism has created many more detriments to the U.S. and the world as a whole. I believe socialism would have produced a superior version of America compared to the capitalism seen in the Gilded Age because America would have been more efficient, less exploitive of other countries(post-Gilded Age), and would have seen results similar to that of other far leftist countries. Socialism promotes efficiency more
The ad of the house in the paper symbolizes the American Dream but the house in reality symbolizes deceit as Jurgis finds out that the ad is untruthful and misleading. The helpless hogs on the conveyor belt foreshadow Jurgis’s powerless future since he is unable to overcome life in the lower class due to various hardships. Sinclair’s use of word choice helps portray the ugliness of human existence for allowing the distribution of poorly sanitized meat, and the struggles of living in society’s lower class in
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
Since the nineteenth century, the food industry has worsened due to the presence of national monopolies with ties to the government. In The Jungle, Jurgis loses his job at Durhams, and other employers refuse to hire him because of Durhams local monopoly. Later in the novel, Jurgis learns that the police and the mayor formed agreements with large corporations their executives’ transgressions were forgiven.
Jurgis becomes quite hopeful for him and his family's future in America; however, once settled in Chicago, Jurgis realizes how hard he must work to support his family. Jurgis compares his family to being the same as trapped rats (Sinclair 77) and they had no way of getting out of their desperation (Sinclair 118). This comparison indicates that Jurgis and his family feel trapped in their
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair In the Jungle, it is shown that there were many factors that made the lives of immigrants miserable. In the early 1800’s the American life was wanted by many new immigrants. In The Jungle, the life of Lithuanian immigrants was made miserable by alcoholism, poverty, and people in higher authority. Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, describes how alcoholism, poverty, and people in positions of authority had a negative impact on the lives of immigrants.
The Jungle Book Review In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle to expose how rough the life of immigrants coming to the United States was. This book also exposed unsanitary conditions in meatpacking industry. Upton Sinclair’s main focus in this book was to show how tough life was for immigrants coming to America, but instead he disgusted Americans by the conditions of the meat factories. The book begins with the main character, Jurgis Rudkus, and his wife Ona, having their marriage reception in Chicago. This gives the reader background information about the characters, where they are from, and why they have come to American.