What does one do when their family is struggling? In the novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis provides not only for his family, but for anyone in need during hardship. He works hard so no one else has to and everyone can be happy. Even when a crisis comes up he finds a way. He takes care of the ones he loves and leaves no one out. Complete strangers can even benefit from him because he treats everyone with kindness. He had so little yet he gave so much.
Not everyone who immigrated to the New World had the American dream right away. Most had to work, some harder than others. Jurgis took the burden of the family onto his shoulders. He found and did everything possible to provide for himself and his family in hard times. Jurgis took on the lowliest jobs in Packingtown that required the most work with little pay. While doing backbreaking work twenty-four
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In the beginning of the book when him and Ona were having their wedding feast, he invited hungry strangers to join. He didn't want anyone to starve, even though they could barely afford the feast for themselves. At the end of the book when he thought he had nothing else to live for he discovered a group called the socialist party. He then became the leader of it and united workers across the nation to make for better conditions. Jurgis had found something he cared about and stuck with it.
From the very start of the novel Jurgis was a very caring person. Jurgis took pride in helping other people and always found a way to do it. He provided everything for his family such as support, money and protection from the horrors that his family encountered in Packingtown. Jurgis and Ona immigrated to America hoping for a better life but instead ran in to struggle after struggle. By the end of the book Jurgis had been through a rocky life and sometimes didn't make the best decisions but he always enough compassion to come out a better
The Jungle is a novel about the journey of Jurgis and his family after immigrating from Lithuanian to Packingtown, Chicago. Jurgis finds a job working in the meat-packing industry, and the family finds a house to buy. Although Jurgis did not want Ona or the children going to work, times get hard and the whole family ends up getting a job. While at work, Jurgis injures his ankle; this causes him to be out of work for a few months. To keep the family from losing their jobs, Ona sleeps with her boss, Conner.
Later in her pregnancy she becomes very ill. Soon after, she dies along with her baby. Suddenly Jurgis comes into realization with what is happening. Matthew Morris writes, “Jurgis comes to see and comprehend the class system that has destroyed everyone he cared about, and to join the fight to change that system” that has made him lose his job and lead to his wife’s death (5). Jurgis decides to join a rebellion to protest the mistreatment of immigrants.
The Jungle follows a young Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkis and his teenage wife Ona. Together, the couple struggles to provide for themselves and for Ona’s family. Jurgis maintains a job
Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Document Analysis The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!”
In the novel, Jurgis refers to the meatpacking industries, what goes in the food, and the processes to make the food. He
He makes his family out to have followed the original way to wealth, hard work instead of the noble stature his family believes in coming down from
The Unfair Treatment of Immigrants in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Imagine going somewhere new, far away and ending up in a bad situation with no way out. That’s how Jurgis and his family felt when they left their home country of Lithuania to come to America to pursue their dreams of wealth. Their world was quickly turned upside down when they realized that the deck was stacked against them in Chicago’s unfair system, which was designed to leave them trapped. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair will bring you into the world of manipulation and poverty in Chicago during the 1900s.
"And, for this, at the end of the week, he will carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour,” (Sinclair 85) shows that the employees-- typically new immigrants at the plants-- were hardly provided for and were not paid at all that much. They were exploited; working for long hours for this little pay. Jurgis, the main character in The Jungle, struggled throughout part of Sinclair’s novel because of his lack of income from the meat packing plant he worked at, Durham’s. Many people in this time did as well, like Jurgis, having trouble seeking a home, food or clothing fit enough to purchase with the little they were provided with from their
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.
In the midst of all of this he finds a balance by focusing on what really matters. At the same time this keeps him focused on his main goal which is education. Education will be his family's way out of poverty. Through seeing his younger brother that is unemployed and will be having a child soon he looks beyond this and is genuinely proud of where he comes from. He realizes how strong his family is when he seems them fighting through poverty and making things.
Sinclair bases these struggles on things that happen to Jurgis and his family. One example that the author describes is how thousands of men wait outside the workplace just to get a chance at a job. “All day long the gates of the packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came, literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each other for a chance for life…. Sometimes their faces froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all together— but still they came, for they had no other place to go” (Sinclair 92). Another example the author displays is when Ona, Jurgis’s wife, dies after giving birth.
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
Throughout the book, Jurgis had to constantly switch jobs because of accidents that laid him off work. No jobs was available to Jurgis except the fertilizer mill. The job at the fertilizer is the worse of it can be, Jurgis describes “...the phosphates soaked in through every pore of jurgis’s skin and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed. the blood was pounding in his brain like an engine’s throbbing ……”(108). The fertilizer mill Jurgis is working at is extremely unsafe.
“Sinclair presents socialism as Jurgis’ only hope—and the only hope of workers like him”(1110). Jurgis, the main character in Sinclair’s book, was the father in the rather unfortunate Lithuanian family. The family made the decision to travel to America because to them as outsiders, the country was known as “the promise land,” a place to go in search for hope and well being in their future. It
His father died when he was only three years old, leaving the family in economic hardship. His mother struggled to raise eight children on her own. However, despite the financial difficulties, she realized the importance