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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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Title and Author: The Jungle , Upton Sinclair Genre: Historical Novel Date Published: February 26 , 1906 , Historical Connections: The Jungle is connected to a group of journalist who were active in The Progressive Era which took place from the 1890s to the 1920s. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker which was a term coined by Theodore Roosevelt this term is used to describe an investigative journalist. These journalist exposed problems in factories and businesses. Protagonist Jurgis Rudkus is an immigrant from Lithuania.

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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).

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Analyzation of Jurgis Rudkus Indeed, characterization in literature is a crucial matter, bringing even more depth and purpose. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair discusses the corruption of the meat-packing industry, specifically focusing on a man with a Lithuanian family. The book discusses the life of Jurgis Rudkus, during which he completely evolves as a man. With characterization Sinclair brought this book to life, and began a revolution in the meat-packing industry.

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Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” tells the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his immigrant family. In his homeland of Lithuania, Jurgis meets his love, Ona. However, he is denied marriage to her Sometime later, Jurgis tries again to seek her hand, but fins out Ona’s father has died and her family is in debt. Along with his father, Antanas, and Ona’s family: Teta Elzbieta, Marija, Jonas, and six children, Jurgis moves to America to start a new life. They arrive in New York, and soon travel to Chicago.

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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.

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Those writers and journalists were called “Muckrakers”, Upton Sinclair was one of them. In order to stay on his position and support the muckrakers, he chose to tell the truth to American public instead of keeping silence. Then, “The Jungle” became his weapon to oppose the trusts and some corrupt officials. Although the content is dangerous and risky, it’s also effective and worth. People responded dramatically to this book, the risk has valuation for Upton Sinclair to take and hook the

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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

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In 1904 Upton started writing about immigrants and the meat packing industry. This later lead to him being hired to write an expose for a socialist newspaper (Lauren Coodley). The expose later was written in book for and became The Jungle. The Jungle was very difficult to get published because of the controversial content but in 1906 in was published (Robert

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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.

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During the 1900’s working conditions were undeniably horrible. In Packingtown everyday got more difficult as the days went on. In the meat packing business things were supposed to be done quick. Inside the factories packing, chopping, inspecting and people actions didn’t mix. Not only did the people in the factories suffered, the people outside of the factory also suffered.

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In summary, Sinclair’s the Jungle tackles problems about the capitalist system and uses instances of literary elements to connect two concepts, like animals in the Slaughterhouse and immigrants in the US, but these are not Sinclair’s primary concern. Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle with a desire for money. This claim is proven by the overwhelming instances of impossible levels of misfortune, excessively gory imagery, and disturbing descriptions of the food you eat and how it’s truly prepared. The main character’s dad dies, then his wife, then his son, from drowning in mud, then his other family member gets eaten by rats. To have that many horrible things happen to one family is impossible.

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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,

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