Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Document Analysis The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!” (Sinclair 31). Written as an indirect …show more content…
However, it doesn’t take much into account the striking realism of the danger that was prevalent in much of the book. “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.” (Sinclair 196). Sinclair, in a way, didn’t even realize what such powerful things he was describing in his text at the time because again, it wasn’t his main objective with the novel. Before much of this was viewed as one of the larger issues with American food processing, it was more than likely written to satirize many portions of the book to embellish Sinclair’s initial point on …show more content…
Change in many aspects not just related to labor rights or food safety like mentioned in The Jungle. However, it is interesting to see just how this argument was brought up, especially in a time where such types of activism were more direct and somewhat aggressive for change. The Jungle takes a somewhat hesitant and indirect stance on their arguments because of the political fiction that takes place in the novel. The progressive era was a period that had such a high want to change that many people would take to striking or even more extreme measures such as riots. I find this type of demeanor very interesting, being the fact that an entirely different approach was taken through literature, reiterating the notion that it is essentially fiction literature
Matthew DeBacker Mr. Shinabarger AS American History 19 October 2015 Corruption in The Jungle The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, was a very impactful book during the industrialization age and still impacts people today. It is considered one of the most important books in the Industrialization Age in America. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker and wanted to draw attention the the terrible things that went on in the meatpacking industry. So he highlighted several key themes such as poverty, capitalism, and immigration during that time period
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.
In the early 1900s, food safety was an incredibly unfamiliar and overlooked part of America’s food industry. Written by muckraker Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, was a controversial novel that depicted the harsh living and working conditions of immigrants working in the food industry. After the release of The Jungle, thousands of meat-eating Americans were horrified at what had been happening in factories. Disgusting yet accurate details presented in The Jungle were the basis for the creation of laws to stop food production from becoming so unsanitary.
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair written in 1906, tells of inhumane conditions that immigrants faced when coming to industrialized cities of the United States. The book begins with the wedding of Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus to help show the reader how even during these times such as this, immigrants are still mistreated. Their wedding causes them to realize that they have one hundred and more in debt. Jurgis, who believes greatly in the American dream, tells his wife that he will find a job quickly and get them out of their debt. He, as well as other members of his family members go out to find work to get them out of their debts, but whenever they find a job something always seems to go wrong, forcing them to lose their jobs.
While Upton Sinclair was writing what was soon to be a bestseller and a book that is still used in literature classes to this day, he kept in mind that he wanted to portray the exploited lives of workers for the meatpacking industries. He really emphasized that they were substantially underpaid for the harsh working conditions they were put in. What the public emphasized on was how the meat was being treated, this caused an uproar throughout the country. It was never Sinclair’s goal to muck rack and expose what the meatpacking industries were doing. Now to this day Sinclair’s, The Jungle, is known for being a classic muckraking tale.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair gave great insight into many issues that were evolving in America during the Progressive era. It is based around telling the story of an immigrant family who comes to America for a better life. They soon realized the American dream wasn’t what it seemed. Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry, and the poverty in America. He aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit it in the stomach.
For a majority of the outside world, the United States of America was more than just a country. Many people from Europe, Asia and all over would do just about anything for the opportunity to move to America and pursue the well-known “American Dream”. Many foreigners immigrated to America with hope that the American Dream would allow them to work towards a successful career. However, in the early 1900’s this dream was far out of reach for most. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, depicts the harsh environment and conditions of the Chicago meat packing industry as well as the amount of working class poverty.
The Bosses squeezed and drained the life of those men. In the book The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair he described the life of a struggling family try to work and stay alive in the filth. The working conditions in the factories were unsafe, unsanitary and people made little. The purpose of this book was for people to become socialist other than capitalist.
A Time for Struggle and Change Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, depicts the struggles of Lithuanian immigrants as they worked and lived in Chicago’s Packingtown at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The United States experienced an enormous social and political transformation; furthermore, the economy, factories, and transportation industry grew faster than anyone had ever seen. Immigrants and migrants were attracted to city life for its promise of employment and their chance at the American Dream. The poor working class had little to no rights, and they grappled with unfair business practices, unsafe working conditions, racism, Social Darwinism, class segregation, xenophobia, political corruption, strikes, starvation, poor housing,
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
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.
However, readers at the time were not very concerned about the petty immigrants living on the lower rung of society. Rather, they cared about what affected them most: the condition of the meat they were eating-- and had been eating-- for years, that were produced by some of the very factories mentioned in Sinclair’s novel. For the majority of The Jungle’s readers, the fact that poor immigrants were being exploited was not bothersome. Instead, the fact that the food that readers had been eating for years contained the power to kill them seemed shocking, pushing the nation into a worried frenzy. Readers were disgusted by the facts they were reading, catalyzing the creation of administrations like the FDA.
Though best known for his muckraking efforts that helped to end the Gilded Age, Upton Sinclair wrote nearly a hundred books in his lifetime. From a young age his mother encouraged in him a love of reading; when he could, Sinclair could be found reading for up to fourteen hours a day. However, his childhood was marked by poverty and his father's raging alcoholism. His mother took a strong sense of morality against his father’s drinking and of all types of sinning. These strict morals implanted in him made the socialist party very appealing.
Sinclair says: “There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.” (Chapter 14). This quote tells how the meat was kept before it was sold to the people and that the company cared nothing about the health of others.
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.