In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus, two Lithuanian immigrants who have arrived in Chicago, are getting married. They hold their veselija, or wedding feast, in Packingtown, Chicago because it is the center of the meat-packing indusrty. The highlight of the celebration is the acziavimas, a traditional Lithuanian dance. Each guest help the couple pay for the wedding which can cost up to three hundred dollars- more than a years paycheck for many of the guests. Some though dont contribute and just attend for the free food and drinks. Ona notices that many people are doing this and she worries about the cost of the reception, but Jurgis reassures her that they will find some way to pay the bill. He decides to work harder …show more content…
She agrees to attend a political meeting with him somethimes. Jurgis finds a job as a porter in a small hotel that pays thirty dollars a month plus board. Tommy Hinds, Jugis's new boss, is a well- know socialist speaker and is thrilled that Jurgis is a comrade. Hinds urges Jurgis to describe the awful filth of the meat-packing plants along with the real recepies for tinned meats and sausages. Jurgis takes up the socialist cause with a passion. He learns all about the political and economic systems of power in America. When he cannot sway people to socialism, he becomes frustrated. He attempts to persuade Marija to leave prostitution, but she says she cannot because she is addicted to morphine and she plans to remain a prostitute for the rest of her life. He attends a meeting with a magazine editor who opposes socialism, but had agreed to listen to some proponents of the movement. In the end of the novel, a spirited speaker at a political meeting urges socialists to continue fighting because the victory is not yet won, encouraging them with the words, " Chicago will be ours!"
My personal opinion about The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is that is is an adventurous, but depressing tale about how drastically ones life can change in an instant. Also it shows that n=no matter how bad your life seems, there is always a way to make it better. After Jurgis's wife and son died he fell in to a terrible depression and tried to drink away his grief, but socialism for the most part pulled him out and gave him something to live for. He did everything he could for his family. This book has some dull moments and its moving moments. Overall, I think it was an excellent novel to
Jurgis and his family are put in the center of this district which began to corrupt each and everyone of them little by little Over and over again Jurgis runs into conflict and could never find rest and assurance of peace. No matter how hard he fights to help his family and himself achieve the American
WHAT IS “THE JUNGLE”? The Jungle is book written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, published by Jabber & Company in the state of New York. It contains details on the Chicago meatpacking industry, originally written to help bring awareness to the harsh conditions of immigrants workers in these industries. The public, however, too the terrible, unsanitary conditions of these industries, with rats running along the meat, and employees going to the bathroom in the same spot they work with the meat in.
Upton Sinclair displays his dexterous writing ability in one of his most widely familiar books “The Jungle”. Throughout this unique masterpiece Sinclair broadcast multiple conditions which one today would not know to judge from its content as a horror or jest. He goes about this by storytelling the life of an immigrant family. These conditions vary from poor living setups to the stomach turning health violations undertook by the meat industry. Overall imposing his theory that the heavily sold illusion of the american dream wasn’t at all what it was made out to be.
While he sought to change the system of labor in the United States with his novel, The Jungle, he instead impacted the food industry, which saw changes in the food and production process. Fortunately for Sinclair, I have discovered why he failed. Unfortunately for Sinclair, I am forty-nine years too late. Sinclair fails to make labor changes through his novel because
However, a man soon approaches him and offers him a job, but Antanas has to give him 1/3 of all of his wages. Tamoszius tells Jurgis that this practice is just a part of a deeper web that goes on in business. Soon Antanas and Jurgis are both working in the meat packing factories, and discover the truly disgusting practices of these establishments. Around the same time, the family learn that their house is a swindle and they are paying interest in addition to their monthly payment. Soon Ona and Stanislova get jobs, with Stanislova getting a job canning lard and Ona sewing cover on ham.
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
Sinclair’s novel The Jungle has many themes in the book. It starts off as a family moving to America for a better life. Many things happened in the book for explain all the dishonest men, the significance of the title, society, Jurgis encounters, the significance of the quote, “I aimed for the public heart, and...hit it in the stomach.” The United States wasn't what they expected but life is like an elevator,on your way up you sometimes have to stop and let somebody off.
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).
It is also described how Jurgis, the main character, comes to realize that the company he works for sells diseased meat with the label “deviled ham” or “potted ham”. The contents of these cans could be a mixture of leftover bits or entrails from a large number of slaughtered animals. These depictions truly hit the reader in their stomachs not their emotional ties to immigrant’s lifestyles. Although they may have later emotional due to the death of Jurgis child. However, the spoiled canned food is directly related to the reader for it directly affects them and their dinner
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.
There are many other traps around America that deceive the immigrants because their weakness of not knowing English and the desire of getting a great life in America which lead them unpreparedly get fooled by the businessmen. These traps prevented the immigrants from leaving America, because of the significant amount of debt that they have to pay each month, which forced them to keep working and become the slave of this capitalistic society in America. Unfortunately, even they work very hard, in most of the time they will not get anything in return, such that Jurgis’s family cannot even keep the house at the of the book and many of family members’ health destroyed by the harsh working conditions in the
They provided a voice for the American people providing an accurate picture of living conditions in communities. Upton Sinclair was as famous writer that wrote a novel called The Jungle that provided an accurate description of the living conditions of immigrants in Chicago and the industrial industry. The novel caused a heightened concern for safety from consumers and public officials and also targeted concerns of sanitary issues and packaging violation in the meatpacking industry. Upton Sinclair was considered a muckraker journalist that was responsible for inspiring public outrage which, cause numerous political movements in the early 1900’s. Sinclair’s novel, the Jungle exposed the inhumane living conditions and treatment of immigrants while also exposing the unsanitary conditions of the meat packaging industry.
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.
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