The Jungle Symbolism Analysis

“With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great Packingtown swindles” (par.1). This statement from Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, introduces trust from a family because of their own personal knowledge . The Jungle, features an immigrant family trying to survive in 1900’s Chicago meat packing district. In the story, Sinclair’s goal is to expose the miserable life of immigrants who work in factories. To accomplish this goal, the author conveys rhetorical strategies such as diction, pathos, and metaphors.

The early 20th century was a great time for America. Industrialization was booming as more and more factories were coming up in the most populous cities. Stockyard jobs were created in exponential numbers, employing many young people as well as immigrants. Hiring these naive individuals allowed for the hierarchical manipulation of these people. Capitalism was a large problem, feeding the bosses large suppers as the workers starved. Capitalism shown through the two articles, The Jungle and Fast Food Nation, is an underlying flaw in the meatpacking industry.

In early 1900, specifically, 1906, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written. This novel told the story of a Lithuanian immigrant who worked in a filthy Chicago meatpacking plant. It exposed the meatpacking industry by stating their vile practices not only towards their meat but their workers as well. This was a result of the combination of many immigrants in the United States to pursue a better life, and the fact that many big industries were looking for ways to maximize their profit.

Upton Sinclair reflects the reality of the people during the late 1800’s in his novel The Jungle. In his novel, Sinclair wants to promote Socialism by showing how people lived in the meatpacking plant and under a corrupt government. The inhuman working conditions, combined with the lack of hygiene and a corrupt government, made trying to make a living a total hardships for the low class and the immigrants.

In the early 1900s, food safety was an incredibly unfamiliar and overlooked part of America’s food industry. Written by muckraker Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, was a controversial novel that depicted the harsh living and working conditions of immigrants working in the food industry. After the release of The Jungle, thousands of meat-eating Americans were horrified at what had been happening in factories. Disgusting yet accurate details presented in The Jungle were the basis for the creation of laws to stop food production from becoming so unsanitary.

The main goal of businesses, in the growing manufacturing economy, was to produce the most product at the cheapest price. With a large influx of desperate immigrants looking for jobs, companies were able to quickly capitalize on the rights of vain workers. Viewing as them as easily replaceable, owners were easily able to take advantage of the rights of workers and utilize them to their advantage. The desperation prevalent in those willing to take the jobs that nobody else wanted supplied labor to factories, often for a high price. Worker’s rights were often manipulated in the industries exemplified throughout The Jungle. 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. Thus, Sinclair’s purpose of writing The Jungle failed to bring readers to advocate for the rights of workers trapped in the low wages, unsafe working conditions, and long hours of meatpacking factories, but rather, succeeded in opening the country’s eyes to the meatpacking practices that went on behind closed doors and the establishment administrations to protect the public from these unscrupulous

Corruption runs rampant in Packingtown, the town where Jurgis and his newly immigrated family work in the meatpacking industry. The Jungle’s heavy-handed symbolism alludes to the theme of corruption. For example, the animals represent the workers themselves; while the workers are the cattle, “each in a separate pen … leaving them with no room to turn around,” the wealthy capitalists are the “‘knockers,’ … watching for a chance to deal a blow” (Sinclair, 39). In other words, the capitalists are taking the workers lives

In conclusion, the novel The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was based on the lives of immigrants living in Chicago trying to create a new life for themselves all while trying to survive in the harsh working and living conditions. The title represents what live was really like and that like in a jungle, you had to fight for survival. Sinclair described what life was like then and what was going on in the meat packing industries by using examples of corruption and poverty that Jurgis and his family

In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair explains how horrible working conditions were for people in the meatpacking industry. Have you ever wondered what effect Upton Sinclair had on American industry? The Jungle is about the poor working conditions and the very poor sanitation in 1906. We will also be talking about the backstory behind Upton Sinclair.

Eden Robinson’s Monkey beach is set in the small, coastal village of Kitamaat in western B.C., home to the province’s Haisla community. Robinson’s characterization of a Haisla family living in present day Kitamaat exposes the challenges that are faced by the Aboriginal people conserving their traditions, values and social mores under the dominating influence of Canada’s West Cost society. She frames these concerns by following the struggles of Lisamarie (Lisa) Hill as she reconciles the ideologies of her modern Canadian upbringing with the often-discordant beliefs of her First Nation heritage, which becomes more complicated by the experience of the supernatural appearances that only Lisa can see. Lisa’s relationship with the spirit world allows her to transgress the history of abuse and reconnect with her heritage, however, she must struggle with North American ideologies which consider the supernatural as flawed. With the help of Ma-ma-oo (Lisa’s grandmother) she begins to gain control within the spirt world, thus re-connecting with her heritage. However, with the modern society that they live with Lisa must either

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.

Upton Sinclair is recognized today as one of the most influential writers during the birth and largest period of industrialization in America: The Industrial Revolution. He is known most by his incredible, life-changing novel, The Jungle, which was written and published in 1906. The book was written to explain the amount of power and control that big businesses had during this era over the average workingman. “The novel’s story of the destruction of an immigrant Lithuanian family by the forces of corporate greed and poverty is a tale of horror almost beyond tragedy”(1110). Throughout the novel, Sinclair shows a series of unfortunate events that the Lithuanian family encounters once they move to America in hope of finding a life of living the “American Dream.” Although his writing influenced

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.

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

During the time period of the 1900’s, the meat packaging industry in Chicago, as Sinclair mentions in his novel, The Jungle, was a very unsanitary and extremely dangerous workplace that lacked much more than just a few safety precautions. Simple things, such as enforcing hand washing or workers’ rights were unheard of in the working environment. It is clear that Upton Sinclair was trying to expose the worker’s horrendous labor conditions in order to improve their situation, along with the introduction of socialism.