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. In the “The …show more content…
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 notes the time and symptoms in order to show toxicity of the workspace many worker had to endure. When Jurgis’s blood is compared as an engine throbbing, it shows that Jurgis is not in a good condition because when an engine is throbbing, it is a sign of not working properly. It is also important to note that Jurgis had to endure this pain because it was the only job left for him to support his family. A lot of sacrifices were made in spite of health concerns. Like many folks in the working class, money to support the family became a greater concern. Yet jobs like this can easily lead to death and sickness that can worsen the family’s struggle. No matter how horrible the job was, workers would still choose to work in order to support the family. After locating Marija, Jurgis learns that she became a prostitute. Sinclair describes the prostitute as “a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. (89) Sinclair uses simile to show that prostitution is just like slavery, it is inescapable once one starts.Yet, prostitution is stated as a positive work because it provides for the
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Show MoreThe Jungle by Upton Sinclair The Jungle by Upton Sinclair truly exemplifies the difficulties immigrant’s families run into when pursuing the “American Dream.” The Jungle can be evaluated as a primary source as it uses direct evidence in Chicago in PackingTown district. PackingTown District is known to be Chicago’s biggest meatpacking industry. Written during the Progressive Era it revealed the many dangerous and horrible conditions that are in the meatpacking industry. It uses vivid description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat, which ultimately shocked the public.
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is a novel that depicts the lives of Lithuanian immigrants working in the meatpacking industry in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The jungle refers to the harsh and unforgiving environment of the meatpacking district, where workers are subjected to dangerous working conditions, unsanitary living quarters, and exploitation by powerful meatpacking companies. The book opens with Jurgis Rudkus, a strong and proud Lithuanian immigrant, arriving in Chicago with his family. They quickly find work in the meatpacking district, but soon discover that the reality of their new life is far harsher than they had imagined.
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.
For most of us, we take life for granted; We forget about all the everyday things like hot food, readily available running water, and a climate controlled house, all things that we take advantage of on a daily basis. All of these things, basic necessities, that immigrants struggled to keep if they ever did gain them in the first place. For the most part Upton Sinclair portrayed the life of an average citizen who started their life as an immigrant very well. Whether it be the extremely poor working conditions people were forced to deal with, the everyday struggles that they had to confront on a daily basis, or even the political corruption that the cities were once plagued with, Sinclair’s story matches up to what actually happened in history
Uptown Sinclair’s book The Jungle was originally written to expose the working conditions within the meat packing industry. Sinclair shocked millions as he bore what it was really like behind the scenes. Employees worked with contaminated and rotting meat, which was not a health violation at the time. This eventually led to new food and federal safety laws. Most of the labor force was an immigrant, who moved to the United States with hopes of the “American Dream.”
The Jungle is a political fiction novel written by an American novelist,Upton Sinclair, and its based on the harsh living conditions of immigrants and the poor meat industry's in Chicago 1906. This novel is about a couple, Jurgis and Ona, that moved to Chicago for a better life, but in reality they have moved to some place that is dangerous and filthy. The couple got married and lived a life that wasn't quite as they expected once they moved. Ona ends up getting pregnant and ends up dying as she is giving birth and Jurgis has to go to a job everyday risking his own life due to the harsh working environment in the slaughterhouse industries, which leads him to many problems physically and mentally. Sinclair then goes back and forth to tell many
Jurgis falls into a very deep depression and his life goes downhill from there. He goes through many life changing experiences because he endured such bad horrible things while being out on the streets. After a little while, Jurgis starts to change his life for the better. He eventually gets a good stable job
“Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between master and slave”. The international best-seller book The Jungle as published by author Upton Sinclair on February 26, 1906 had a profound impact on society in the way that the working class is viewed, particularly with the food industry and meat packing plants such as the one that took place in Chicago during the story. While building public sympathy through the depiction of such oppressed workers, it also managed to spark a great deal of protests about the poor conditions and lack of sanitation that took place in the food industry. In a short matter of two months after Sinclair had published the book it
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.
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.
The Jungle exposed the way workers were treated in the meatpacking industry. It stated that they were exposed to filthy workplaces, in which the smell would be outrageous. They were forced to work through these smells for non-stop hours. In addition, the smell would come from the meat itself. The smell would bring in rodents, such as rats, into the factories.
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
The Out of Many textbook discusses the history of America. A huge part of the history in America is industrialization. Chapter 19 of the textbook talks about the industrial city in which The Jungle by Upton Sinclair opens the realities factory life and work in the early 1900’s. The Jungle tells about the lives of the workers in factories, specifically meat, and how harsh and disgusting their work really was. The topic of industrial cities and their living and working conditions from the Out of Many textbook is weaved in The Jungle .
When Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, a book about the terrible environment of the meat-packing factories in Chicago, he hoped to motivate reform in immigrant working conditions and promote socialism. Instead, what shocked readers the most was the sordid surroundings in which their future meals were prepared. Sinclair 's audience saw these conditions as a threat to themselves, and that energized reform in the meat-packing industry. What scared audiences the most was how real this threat was to their lives. As can be witnessed in the results of Sinclair 's crusade, the most effective propaganda is that which rouses the visceral survival instinct.
In addition to this, the ways in which the female sex worker is deemed as problematic is seen as related to intrinsic characteristics of her personality, or tied back to early trauma and past experiences. It is seen as impossible that a sex worker would fall into their occupation out of choice, and instead there is always some reasoning offered for how a person could fall so far down the ladder that they are (supposedly) forced to sell their body in exchange for economic resources. This comes out of the assumption that this line of work is dirty and not desirable, something that puts the woman in danger, and something that can never be considered a valid form of employment (CRM 2307 Class Notes: March 14th). All sex workers are seen as being a certain ‘type’ of immoral woman, who has lost control of her life.