Jurgis Rudkus, the main character in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, has a very rough journey when he moves to America from Lithuania. He faces many hardships and they're difficult for anyone to endure. Throughout the novel Jurgis is put through the justice/prison system multiple times, and each time he experienced something new, whether it be the unjust treatment he received, the food he was served, or even the condition of his cell and daily life there.
The novel portrayed the justice system as an unfair one. They treat immigrants and the poor unfairly. Jurgis was taken to court and presented to a judge, but the judge didn't care about Jurgis's side. Unfairness and bias was common among the court systems in the nineteenth and twentieth century. People were often coerced into saying the things needed for conviction and thrown into
…show more content…
The more common penal sanctions were fines, whipping, and the socks. The punishments varied from prison to prison. Some better than others and some worse. At a certain point the punishments become torture. From waterboarding to electrocution, the prisoners were disciplined.
Having been stripped the delinquent is manacled in the great bath tub. At the height of his neck in the sides of the tub are grooves and in these play great wooden clamps, carved to fit the human body. These are screwed together so as to grip in a vise the man’s chest and arms. In front of him is a faucet and a bit of hose, throwing a smart stream of water. First it is necessary to get the man’s mouth open by making him cry out (which is usually done by frightening him), whereupon the water streams down his throat and strangles him ("Torture").
In the novel, Jurgis refers to the meatpacking industries, what goes in the food, and the processes to make the food. He
In 1904 Upton Sinclair was given $500 and commissioned by Fred Warren, the editor of the Appeal to Ransom to write about the wage slavery going on in Chicago’s packinghouse district after a failed strike by the workers. He was a socialist who had written several articles, political novels and was a patron of left-wing magazines. He spent seven weeks in Chicago doing his research. He was very much ill prepared for what he saw. He had never been in such areas, as he was raised in Baltimore and living in New Jersey.
Jurgis agreed upon arriving Jurgis could not believe such a huge house with a lot of expenses things. The man said that he own a meatpacking company. At the end of the story Jurgis conversion to socialism. The novel has a switch from narrative to
The most common punishment was solitary confinement, which was when prisoners were put into cells by themselves. Another punishment was the dark cell. It was a cell that was pitch black and it contained an iron cage in the middle of it, the prisoners would be chained up in the iron cage and only be fed bread and water once a day, which barely kept them alive. The dark cell was also called the snake den because prisoners started a “rumor” that the guards would intentionally drop snakes in there to harass the prisoners, they were given this punishment when they were caught possessing opium, refusing work, or stealing. There was also ball and chain, which was when the prisoners had to carry a heavy ball everywhere they went.
Sometimes the people would have the experience of being bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion while in the Dark Cell. One punishment prisoners would receive if they attempted to escape was having a ball chained to their leg to disincentivize escaping the prison. Another common type of punishment in the prison was solitary confinement. A prisoner could be sent to solitary confinement for a wide variety of infractions such as fighting or bad language. solitary confinement was made up of adobe bricks and had a metal
Lower class people living in swill in cramped tenements. People getting injured daily and oftentimes dying from accidents at work. Upton Sinclair was a man who believed in exposing the wrongs of society. Most specifically that of the meat packing industry. In his best selling novel The Jungle, he reveals the disgusting conditions of the meat packing industry.
The harshest punishments they did have were a ball and chain if they tried to escape and “The Dark Cell” for the harshest punishment. The dark cell was basically a cave dug into the ground with a 15 by 15 foot cage where the prisoner would be placed stripped to their underwear with no light and only bread and
The story describes the disgusting conditions and detail of the meatpacking facilities which was one of the main reasons for writing this novel. Sinclair describes how the animals were packed in the stockyards and slaughtered in unsanitary conditions. Jurgis faces the chance of death each day he arrives at work. The family is hit by debt, illness and bad weather throughout the story but still have to trudge on to pay off the debt created by the wedding. The families lose and gain unsteady jobs as the story goes on but never anything
This essay will be about two injustices the Scottsboro trial and Tom Robinson’s trial. A few similarities are that they were treated unfairly and they were all accused of a repulsive crime, raping a white woman. In the Scottsboro trial though, two women were supposedly raped. Both trials happened in the same time period, while also noting that the women in both trials came from poor backgrounds. Atticus gave his all to his case while the nine young men’s lawyer also tried his best.
The strongest analogy used to describe this is when comparing the description of the hogs coming through the slaughterhouse to the immigrants coming into America during the time of the novel. In the novel this event is described as, “brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day,” showing how many immigrants, represented by cattle, these factories would receive looking for work. Then there is the description of how the immigrants are used to there limits then disposed of after they have either been injured or just lost their job, this is shown when said, “They use everything about the hog except the squeal,” this represent how much of the immigrants use of before eventually firing them or losing their job. (27) With the description of how the businesses use the hogs as well as how indispensable the cattle are and that comparison with the immigrants shows how the immigrants are literal animals in the eyes of the
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.
Forms of Medieval Torture Torture first appeared within the Roman Empire, around 530 AD. This came in the earlier years of the Middle Ages, otherwise known as the medieval era, and soon characterized the epoch as it was prevalent at the time all throughout Europe. Although various punishments of torture were executed for different crimes and classes that existed within medieval society, the most popular types of punishments were those of humiliation, mutilation, and burning in some form. Humiliation devices and techniques, which left the victim socially isolated, often involved the public in some way.
The justice system has always been the heart of America. But like this country, it has many faults. Prejudice has played a major role in the shaping of this system. In the 1930’s the way a courtroom was set up was completely different from how it looks to day. In the book To Kill A MockingBird, Harper Lee shows just how different it is.
The Jungle In the literary work, The Jungle, the author, Upton Sinclair makes a commentary on the deceitful and dark truth of the American dream. This was achieved by using the canned meat that was produced in Packingtown as a symbol to represent the dream that all the immigrants had about their new lives in America. As the story progresses, the reader, along with the protagonist, Jurgis will discover that the American dream lies cloaked behind a shroud of beautiful lies that masks the vile truths that are the American dream and the canned “beef” processed by the corrupt meat business in Packingtown.
In Jeff Jacoby’s “Bring Back Flogging,” he compares the punishments for crimes in the 17th Century to the punishments for crimes in the present. Jacoby suggests in his essay that “the Puritans were more enlightened than we think, at least on the subject of punishment. Their sanctions were humiliating and painful, but quick and cheap.” Jacoby makes a good argument to bring back an old punishment policy. He points out that “a humiliating and painful paddling can be applied to the rear end of a crook for a lot less than $30,000 (per year).”
In the literary works Night, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the “Rwandan Genocide,” many human rights outlined in “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” were violated. Night is an autobiography written by Elie Wiesel, who was a Jew that survived the Holocaust. He suffered in several different concentration camps, enduring the pain they inflicted. To Kill a Mockingbird is a historical fiction novel written in retrospect of fictional events. Scout, the narrator, is a young girl whose family is experiencing the Depression and segregation.