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The Jungle Critical Analysis

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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.
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. They take you on a journey full of dream-crushing brutality and deception of what seems to be the ideal place to work and built a life. They settle near the stockyards and meatpacking district, where Jurgis finds his first job at Brown’s slaughterhouse. Jurgis, thinking the U.S. offered more freedom, finds that the working conditions there are very …show more content…

One of his novels, Dragon’s Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943, but his best-known novel was The Jungle. Upton’s novels, plays, pamphlets, and articles are all reflected on social themes, due to the fact that his main concentration was on social change. Growing up in a family of different backgrounds both economically and morally, he experienced situations that helped him grow as a person and develop his social ideas and themes for his literature, something which made him the trustworthy and likeable author he is remembered as

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