Review Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: A Book For Societal Change

A Book for Societal Change As one thinks about the change brought about by a book named The Jungle, one might think of its call to preserve forests or wildlife. However, in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, he writes about something completely different. Sinclair writes this book to expose the meat packing industry and its horrific conditions for the meat and for the workers while also promoting socialism as the ideal form of government. His socialists views expressed in the book lead the book to be banned in several countries. Even though many find this book and its ideas to be controversial, it should be taught in secondary schools for its historical value and its example of how a book brought about social change. Sinclair began publishing

$500 in 1904 is worth about $11,500 today. So, one can infer that money was a big reason that Sinclair published this novel. However, Sinclair was also highly passionate about his socialist views. Sinclair’s goal in the book was to inform the public that the best form of government was socialism. However, his book is known for its impact on the industry due to his gory details and experiences. To get information for his book, Sinclair dressed up as a worker and went into the factories to reveal the meatpacking industry’s secrets.He also talked to several workers, police officers, social workers, physicians, and just about anyone he could find that knew the industry. When he felt he had enough information, he went home to New Jersey, locked himself up in a cabin, and wrote for 9 months. His novel was first published as a serial, one chapter per week,by Appeal to Reason. Sinclair ultimately intended for his novel to published as a book, so he began to search for someone to publish his book. He was denied multiple times because many were afraid of having legal liability of the book and getting sued by the meat packing companies. Publishers have even been accused of changing information

It includes muckraking and yellow journalism which make it an excellent example of the type of journalism during this era. Muckraking was a type of journalism that was used to investigate and reveal scandalous or corrupt information. A clear example of muckraking and yellow journalism in Sinclair’s book is when he says, “All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there are not merely rivers of hot blood and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering-vats and soup cauldrons, glue-factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell-there are also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry and dining rooms littered with food black with flies, and toilet rooms that are open sewers,” (Sinclair 27). Yellow journalism is the use of exaggeration and sensationalism in writing. Sinclair’s uses both of these tactics to expose the horrific conditions of the meatpacking industry and the conditions the workers were forced to