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The Jungle Analysis

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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!” (Sinclair 31). Written as an indirect …show more content…

However, it doesn’t take much into account the striking realism of the danger that was prevalent in much of the book. “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.” (Sinclair 196). Sinclair, in a way, didn’t even realize what such powerful things he was describing in his text at the time because again, it wasn’t his main objective with the novel. Before much of this was viewed as one of the larger issues with American food processing, it was more than likely written to satirize many portions of the book to embellish Sinclair’s initial point on …show more content…

Change in many aspects not just related to labor rights or food safety like mentioned in The Jungle. However, it is interesting to see just how this argument was brought up, especially in a time where such types of activism were more direct and somewhat aggressive for change. The Jungle takes a somewhat hesitant and indirect stance on their arguments because of the political fiction that takes place in the novel. The progressive era was a period that had such a high want to change that many people would take to striking or even more extreme measures such as riots. I find this type of demeanor very interesting, being the fact that an entirely different approach was taken through literature, reiterating the notion that it is essentially fiction literature

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