ipl-logo

The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

1310 Words6 Pages

Haytham Alqasmi
2.16.18

The Jungle Essay

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” is a novel about an immigrant family that tries to achieve the American Dream. This family goes through many hardships and America is not what they imagined. The protagonist and “leader” of the family, Jurgis Rudkus, Ultimately cannot cope with the horrible things he’s endured, and pursues a new lifestyle. While the Novel’s introductory passage prepares the reader to believe the Immigrants achieving the American dream will be the main theme, later details suggest that Sinclair’s personal desire for money is his most important concern while writing this book as shown by his use of excessive disturbing imagery in the meatpacking industry, and it 's overdone amount of gory, …show more content…

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. Sinclair also said that the meat that America ate had dead rats, rat poop, and rotten, poisonous meat in them. While these claims are true, the imagery he used was to a point that is no longer meant to sell you an idea, but to sell you a book, and convince you to tell your friends about this book, who in turn buy it. Lastly, Sinclair’s background as a muckraker who’s had practice in commercial nonfiction, with his use of dramatic and grabby titles to sell magazines, is seen in his writing of the Jungle. All of these examples prove that Sinclair wrote the Jungle with, above all else, a thirst for money and to sell as many books as he could, proving it to be a work of commercial

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    450 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upton Sinclair used the words, “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” to describe the reaction his novel, The Jungle received after publication. Sinclair was disappointed that the political point of his novel was overshadowed by the public’s outcry over food production. Sinclair originally intended to show how American factory workers were wrongfully treated but the people focused on the food safety. The Jungle illustrated the unsanitary and unethical standards of how meat was produced throughout factories in the United States. After Sinclair’s book was published the public started to demand new reforms in the meat industry.

    Read More

  • Capitalism Exposed In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    485 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, was published in 1906 to shed light on the harsh realities faced by the working class in America during the 20th century. The novel depicts themes of the grueling immigrant experience and the evils of capitalism. Sinclair uses these themes to inform readers of the struggle and harshness of life during this time and to represent the need for labor rights. The story begins by introducing the main character, Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant.

    Read More

  • Corruption In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    718 Words  | 3 Pages

    The author of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, was a bright student and a skilled writer from a young age. At the age of fourteen he entered the College of the City of New York. He earned his B.A. from City College of New York in 1897 and later entered a graduate program at Columbia University. He was a socialist and wrote many muckraking articles which expose social and political corruption. In 1904 he spent several weeks in a meatpacking plant undercover to research for his book, The Jungle.

    Read More

  • Jurgis Rudkus In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    710 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the novel, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis Rudkus plays an important role. Jurgis goes on a journey with his wife to a new country looking for a job and ends up losing more than he ever thought he could lose. The character, Jurgis Rudkus, is a strong willed man who faces many difficult situations on his journey to find a job and to reunite with his in laws.

    Read More

  • The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1045 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 19th century was the era of the Gilded Age, where the economy was booming, bringing great changes that affected the lives of workers and entrepreneurs. During this period, there was a large influx of immigrants that were coming to America to look for job opportunities. The migration of immigrants proved useful as a source for cheap labor, allowing an even higher rise in the U.S. economy. While American industrialization may have benefited the upper class of the American society, the effects were opposite to the workers of the lower classes. This problem was especially worse for immigrant workers as their belief in the so-called American dream has been worn down due to the misery they had to endure.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Populism And The Progressive Party

    586 Words  | 3 Pages

    Muckrakers were people that became upset by politics and wanted to expose the corruption to America. Famous muckrakers included, Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair, who is the author of The Jungle, a book about the unsanitary conditions in meatpacking plants, leading to food regulations and ultimately the establishment of the FDA, which is very

    Read More

  • The Economic Tension In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1899 Words  | 8 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Food Process In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1261 Words  | 6 Pages

    In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.

    Read More

  • Socialism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    778 Words  | 4 Pages

    Another reason The Jungle fails as an artistic work is because “Sinclair couldn’t invest his character with a certain human particularity.” The characters are too perfectly purposed. They are all written for a particular purpose and serve only that purpose. Therefore, although all symbols lead to an anti-capitalistic interpretation of The Jungle, it fails as an artistic work due to its flat characters and lack of

    Read More

  • How Upton Sinclair Changed American

    1476 Words  | 6 Pages

    Innocent Belief Famously known for his novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair changed American life in the early 1900s without a doubt through his literature. However, many don’t realize that Sinclair reformed American life in more than one instance, through more than one book. At times, he even reached beyond his realm of literature to discuss other needed adjustments. Besides the serendipitous changes he created for the meat packaging industry, Sinclair’s other actions throughout his life are, subjectively, important to American history, according to Anthony Arthur. In his biography, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Arthur reveals his bias towards Sinclair, while supplying a relevant nature to his writing across an in-depth review of Sinclair’s

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Knowledge In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1021 Words  | 5 Pages

    When Upton Sinclair, a progressive era muckraker, wrote The Jungle in 1906, he was attempting to bring knowledge of the horrific conditions in Packingtown to the average citizen. His revelations on the terrors of Packingtown helped to slowly improve the lives of the immigrants. Sinclair’s pursuit of knowledge relates to the slowly growing knowledge of the characters in The Jungle. Throughout the story the characters find themselves in many tragic circumstances that could have been more easily avoided if they had been more aware of their surroundings. The immigrants are full of a false hope for success that disillusions the reality of their life.

    Read More

  • 'The Jungle' By Upton Sinclair

    601 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1433 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1060 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Jungle Critical Analysis

    1202 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The American Dream In Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

Open Document