The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkis and his family. They immigrated from Lithuania to find a better life in America. Their story is a one of tragedy, suffering and poverty. They find their way to Chicago and the meatpacking plants, where they face many hardships and difficulties. Workers at the plants are not paid well, are overworked and face dangerous conditions, but Jurgis has no trouble getting a job there.
At first, Jurgis and his family live in a rat-infested boarding house. Their neighborhood, called Packingtown, sits between a large pit for sewage and a garbage dump. Jurgis and the family decide to put their money together and buy a house. Right away their problems begin as they have trouble making their house payments. All the adults must now work to help provide for the family. When Jurgis gets hurt and can’t work, the children must leave school and find jobs.
After a series of tragedies, including near starvation, illness, several deaths in the family, and some time in jail. Life eventually changes Jurgis as he is robbed of his strength, health and spirit. He is forced to live a life not fit for an animal. Unfortunately he doesn’t understand what is destroying his life. He looses his sense of compassion and humanity as he becomes bitter.
Jurgis leaves Packingtown and becomes a hobo.
Jurgis eventually
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Jurgis is described as, "he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands" and "great black eyes with beetling brows." He is physically strong and can easily carry 250 pounds. It is important to know that Jurgis is very strong, it plays a significant part in influencing his outlook and his life. The most prominent features of Jurgis’s personality are his physical presence and his simple attitude. Jurgis is also arrogant, tender and loving with his family, narrow minded and possessed of a temper. He has his youth, strength and health, he is very positive and
Jurgis and his family went to purchase a house but found out they will be paying monthly, which resembles more of a rent based system than a purchase. On top of moving into a new house they have learned that the payments also have an interest fee on top of their monthly amount. One of their neighbors decides to share a story with them about other families that have not been able to pay off the house and have been evicted which highlights the corrupt nature of the landlords. It also points out that the families before them have had to rely on a key wage earner for the monthly payments and when they are overcome by disease or injury from the stockyards they lose the house. Unfortunately, Jurgis’s family is effected by the diseases from the stockyards as well but they do not have time to take off work in order
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.
In the beginning of The Jungle two immigrants named Ona and Jurgis move to Chicago, get married, and become a family. Throughout the novel the whole family goes through so much together. They were willing to do almost anything when it came down to money and living because they had already lost so much. In the novel The Jungle Jurgis and his family suffer and experience hardships the most traumatic areas were having the inability to provide for one another, poor living conditions, and horrible working conditions. Jurgis and his family suffer and experience hardships one traumatic area was having the inability to provide for one another.
The Jungle is a book about a young couple and several relatives that immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania in search for a better life. The young couple, Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, hold their wedding in a bar in an area of Chicago known as Packingtown. Packingtown is the center of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. It is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is very difficult to find a job. Jurgis and Ona discover, at their reception, that they are more than one hundred dollars in debt with the saloonkeeper.
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
The Bosses squeezed and drained the life of those men. In the book The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair he described the life of a struggling family try to work and stay alive in the filth. The working conditions in the factories were unsafe, unsanitary and people made little. The purpose of this book was for people to become socialist other than capitalist.
Immigrants faced harsh living and working conditions, racial strife, poverty, as well as social class issues. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explores many of these hardships immigrants had to face through the lives of Lithuanian Immigrants. Throughout his novel, Sinclair focuses on poverty and thoughts of what America was supposed to be like to portray hardships immigrants faced when coming to America.
Families that are poor or have a low income are more likely to commit crimes for the purpose of their own needs to survive. “It is a fact that neighborhoods where the poor are concentrated are more prone to high crime rates, and poor residents are the most common victims of crimes” (1). The best explanation for this is that poorer people have the same needs as a regular middle-class citizen. The poor citizens need certain things to help him or her live a healthy life, such as healthcare, food stamps, and more employment options. One may argue that healthcare is too expensive and that food stamps have been taken away from many people.
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.
The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair and published in 1906. I chose this book because it’s been mentioned in multiple History classes I’ve taken. I took it upon interest mainly because it is about the brutal and unfair treatment of immigrants in labor and because it exposed the meat industry. (it exposed both). Sinclair strives to expose the danger in capitalism by vividly describing and exposing the ranging and brutal treatment of immigrant laborers who searched to live the American dream but found misfortune instead.
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 kids can not find out where to go because the jungle is so big and crowded. “He left the path and entered the jungle, keeping close to the enclosure 's netted wall”(Ridley). This makes the reader wonder what is in the middle of the jungle and why he has to stay on the netted wall. The chaos expressed by nature makes people have troubles with each other resulting in the topic of Person
They take you on a journey full of dream-crushing brutality and deception of what seems to be the ideal place to work and built a life. They settle near the stockyards and meatpacking district, where Jurgis finds his first job at Brown’s slaughterhouse. Jurgis, thinking the U.S. offered more freedom, finds that the working conditions there are very