The Theme Of Corruption In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

How would you feel people would feel knowing that they were ingesting contaminated foods? This was the case in the late 18th hundred and early 19th hundred many social and economic problems came to be in the United States. For example, one of the many problems that arose during these years were the sanitation conditions in the companies. To be more precise, food companies were getting away with many of the inspections the government would act on. Meat packing industries were becoming more unsafe everyday.

Sinclair further discusses the causes of this new corruption with the quote , "Here is 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 is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery” (126). This mentions things such as , “ immorality is inevitable “ and that these people are “ always hanging on the verge of starvation “. With money being the main thing people have to have to survive in this society new immigrants will lose their customs to save themselves from starvation. This system of the need of a unprovided profit creates immoral situations where bystanders are

“Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time” (Grace Abbott). The issue of child labor has been around for centuries. Its standing in our world has been irrevocably stained in our history and unfortunately, our present. Many great minds have assessed this horrific issue and its effect on our homes, societies, and ultimately, our world.

Impact of the Great Depression on the Rural Population Students learn in history about the Great Depression and the events that occured with it like the New Deal and the stock market crash. As students we think the events that happened seem bad but if only we were there to see it first hand and to realize how hard the impact actually was. The Great Depression caused the rural families to go through the biggest struggles due to all the losses, changes they went through, and not having what they needed to survive or it getting destroyed. First what is the Great Depression

Many people feared that immigrants entering the United States would want to overthrow the government. “The hostility that greeted the Italian Americans grew out of a rising anxiety about large-scale immigration” (Rapczynski). Italian xenophobia arose when two anarchists, Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were tried for killing two people. Through the prejudice that Italian Americans endured within arrival, many Italians found it difficult to

In Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, a main theme would be greed and selfishness brought on by cultural and economic pressures. The Grapes of Wrath is set in the dust bowl era and depicts a time period in which jobs were scarce and homelessness was prominent. The story is centered around the Joads family who are forced off their land due to the money hungry businessmen. In addition, one of the men driving a tractor for the land owners happens to be a former tenant farmer. When asked by the Joad’s family why one of their own is working for the banks the driver explains, “I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner- and not getting it.

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.

In his novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair describes, “Here was 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” (Sinclair 113). Sinclair compares new immigrants to slaves and their employers to slave owners, because the immigrants’ survival basically depended on the men in power, who treated them like the cattle they slaughtered in the packing houses. In the early twentieth century, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle as a response to the atrocious working and living conditions of immigrants, especially those who labored in the Chicago packing houses. Packingtown’s meat

The Jungle is a story that revolves around the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his family, the Lithuanian immigrant who came to America to lead a better life and worked at meatpacking plants of early 20th century Chicago. The story showcases the hardship that they underwent due to the harsh and bad working condition, poverty, starvation and being cheated by unjust people agents, eventually losing all their money. The Jungle provides us ways to look at the unfettered capitalism that prevailed in the early 20th century. This book also exposes the corruption, inequality, unjustness, sickness and slavery that existed in the society.

In the 1900’s, many people were in poverty and losing their jobs. They were running out of money and didn’t have places to go. People had endless hopes and dreams that they wanted to accomplish, but at the time with certain circumstances, it was difficult for certain dreams to come true. In the book written by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, there are multiple characters that all have fulfillments they want to accomplish in their life,but unfortunately they weren’t able to complete the goals they had set up. Often times people always have hopes, dreams or something/someone that is special to them but at times when problems arise with these certain things, they tend to let go of them.

The town was filthy and living conditions were horrible. The family struggled to find jobs so they could survive. Corruption in the government was very present in Packingtown. By not understanding the language, Americans and Immigrants swindle the family without their knowledge. Jurgis and his family were taken advantage of multiple times throughout this novel.

One of the problems that the people faced was working in dangerous and unsanitary work conditions. In the early 20th century many meatpacking industry 's were unsanitary and dangerous. Upton Sinclair, a young socialist journalist and novelist, spent weeks investigating the topic in Chicago. Once Upton uncovered these appalling facts he soon later

One saying that has been passed down from generation to generation is that war is always unjust and cruel. The story, My Brother Sam is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, shows how one family was dragged into the war and split apart by it. The Meeker family experienced the unfairness of war by losing friends and family and their business suffering. War is unfair for a number of reasons. One of them is how it drags people into it.

Many immigrants found shelter in the tightly packed urban areas causing conditions to plummet. Also, many immigrants needed jobs. These immigrants were willing to work for lesser pay than their citizen counterparts. All this lead to the increase in poverty on both sides, along with the anger of the American citizens. The citizens started blaming the immigrants for the economic depression of that time.

This unprecedented global tragedy claimed millions of lives over four centuries, and left a terrible legacy that continues to dehumanize and subjugate people around the world to this day. The forced movement of West Africans across the Atlantic to the Caribbean happened on cutting-edge scale of brutality and inhumanity, killings and massive abuses. Millions died without a burial, without a trace. These Europeans paid no monetary price for their progress, but they incurred a terrible cost in the form of the of the root racism that we still battle today. The slave trade left an ineradicable mark.