...The American Dream If you were about to lose everything you ever owned or had what would you do? Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, it shows the struggles of Jurgis and his family that moved from Lithuanian to America to live the American dream. Ron Howard wrote the Cinderella Man, it shows James Braddock a boxer that struggles to make it in the depression. It shows the similar struggles between these two titans. A Lithuanian man named Jurgis Rudkus a tall, strong and very well completed man came to Chicago with a family of five looking to live the American dream (Sinclair 8). He had no problem with finding jobs because he was young and energetic with lots of enthusiasm (Sinclair 8). He believed hard work and determination would gain his boss’s attention. A similar story happened with James Brakkock but he was not an immigrant, he was a boxer that lived in New Jersey with two kids and a wife. He also believed that working hard would lead him to success. Jurgis and James are alike in many different ways because they were both tall, naïve, and enthusiastic. Then everything changes for them both....
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...and uneducated and were likely considered peasants in their own countries. Jurgis Rudkus, a fictionalized character in Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle is an example of such a person. Jurgis is from Lithuania and comes to America in search of the American dream. At the beginning of the novel Jurgis comes to America as any other typical European immigrant. He dreams of America as being a land where a man with little can rise through the ranks and ultimately become a man with wealth and prosperity. Jurgis quickly realizes that industrial America is a land of heartache, where a willing man is exploited and used as energy to fuel the never ending industrial machine. At the end of the novel Jurgis learns that the great land of America has its limitations, but at a cost as he loses his wife and child and spends stints in jail for trying to defy the machine. Thus, the novel, The Jungle exemplifies how immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s could not fully realize and achieve the American dream no matter how hard they toiled and worked in the brutal American factories of the time. A jungle is an area of madness and chaos where animals roam free and one either eats or is eaten. Upton Sinclair titled his novel, The Jungle because urban Chicago exemplified all of the same traits that a jungle possessed except for the fact that the jungle of...
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...imperfections of the criminal justice system as well as eliminating the risk of unwholesome products in their everyday lives. For example, in the novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair exposes the unwholesome and unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry during the early 1900s. Furthemore, Sinclair was a 'muckraker' or journalist who exposed the immoral practices of the meatpacking industry in order to push for mandatory meat inspection; however, President Roosevelt viewed the novel as an exaggeration of the truth of the matter and personally inspected the industry's practices themselves. Thereafter, Roosevelt discovered...
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...Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was an American industrialist. After immigrating to the United States in 1835, he amassed a fortune in the steel industry making him one of the world’s richest men. His rags-to-riches story epitomizes the immigrant success story. While Carnegie was a firm believer in the importance of philanthropy and the potential of the laboring class, the rise of business and industry created a widening gap between the rich in the poor by the late nineteenth century. This discrepancy of wealth and unjust activity within business and political enterprises became commonly discussed in writings of the day. Over the course of seven weeks in 1904, journalist Upton Sinclair entered Chicago’s meatpacking industry and...
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...behind besides your family and your dreams can be nerve racking. However, the idea of having an abundance of opportunities kept it thrilling. This is the idea of the American dream from the immigrants point of view and in a way they received the complete opposite from America. In “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair he demonstrates through his characters what day to day life was really like for immigrants. They weren’t treated fair and were forced to live and work in dreadful conditions. Throughout this essay it will be discussed what exactly immigrants were pursuing when coming to America and how that was a false premise to their idea of the American dream. Since immigrants were labeled inferior to the rest of humanity, it made it impossible for them to follow the American dream. Immigrants came over to America to have a fighting chance, to...
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...In 1906, Upton Sinclair's Book The Jungle was published in book form; it had previously been published as a newspaper serial in 1905. Few works of literature have changed history in the United States so much as The Jungle did when it was published. Does Sinclair Lewis make a compelling argument for socialism in his book, The Jungle? I think that the answer to this question is going to be dependent on what you end up believing about socialism. A die hard socialist is probably going to point to Sinclair's ending with zeal and passion because it proves that Jurgis could only find a home when renouncing capitalism and its perverse interpretation of the American Dream. I think that Sinclair believed in the socialist ending of his novel. Yet, I want to pivot the question a bit. While the socialist claim might not be persuasive, like Marx himself, Sinclair is probably more eloquent on suggesting that the current capitalist system, the one being written about at the turn of the century, is in desperate need of repair. His persuasion might lie in his critique of capitalism more than his embrace of socialism. “The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, exposed the nauseating conditions of Chicago’s meat packing industry.” (Goldfield, David R. The American Journey: A History of the United States.) He couldn't have been very happy that the book gained fame for a different reason, but nonetheless it did gain a significant amount of fame and get that message of socialism is better than communism...
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...the rights for “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This document led to the national ethos that is the American Dream. This dream states that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class. Following the Civil War the United States of America underwent large scale change and by the start of the twentieth century was one of the richest nations in the world. By 1950 the U.S.A. was the richest country in the world and a superpower. The state was not the only thing to change during this period. From the late-nineteenth century up to the 1920s average Americans experienced a dramatic expansion in wealth and prosperity. However, with the Wall Street Crash in 1929 the U.S.A. experienced an economic depression that destroyed millions of livelihoods. This eventful period of American history led many to question the American Dreams place in modern America. This research paper will examine the interpretation of the American Dream in literature between the Progressive Era at the start of the twentieth century and the 1950s economic and social boom. In order to do this the paper will examine the novels The Jungle, The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman. These three novels all examine the American Dream in different decades. Written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair The Jungle is a novel that portrayed the life of immigrants and the working class in early-twentieth century America. The...
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...which we the reader have not endured ourselves. His most notable work was The Jungle in which he exposed the American public to the inhumane and hazardous conditions of the meat packing industry and the injustices faced by immigrants. Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland to an alcoholic father whom he was named after and his...
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...Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, attempts to portray the corruption within capitalism in virtue of the American Dream. Due to Sinclair’s earlier years of childhood, he was together exposed to poverty as well as the upper-class. In result of being raised by an alcohol salesman and puritan mother, he could understand the glimpses of the upper-class lifestyle that were received from his mother’s wealthy family. Sinclair was very knowledgeable from a young age, thus leading him to college studying journalism in hopes of becoming a novelist. Though many of his books failed, Sinclair continued on to write a best-selling novel that changed the outlook on society. Originally, The Jungle was not accepted into newspapers as he wished, but was released...
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...I’m sure that, if you’re at all familiar with the American Labor Movement, you’ve at least heard of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. If you haven’t, however, it’s an exposé of the terrible working conditions faced by immigrant laborers in Chicago a little over 100 years ago. Though I’m not writing to rehash a chapter in a US History textbook, The Jungle signifies something important that was often left overlooked— the lack of care that many companies had for their laborers, as jobs were in high demand and employees were as replaceable as a box of tissues. The novel signified how laborers used to be treated and the lack of humanity that plagued them. Luckily enough, a shift in beliefs allowed for a movement that demanded that laborers are an integral...
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...On February 26, 1906, Upton Sinclair released The Jungle, a novel written about the life of a Lithuanian family moving to America and the hardships they faced there. Sinclair, a Socialist and a muckraker reporter wrote the novel in hopes of gaining supporters of the Socialist party. What he ended up doing was single handily cause the formation of the Food and Drug Administration after he showed the nation what was really happening with their food. Yet looking at the work as what it’s meant to be, an exposure of the negative effects of a capitalist society on the impoverished citizens, was Sinclair’s indictment a fair assessment. The novel The Jungle, follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his new family as they move to America in search of...
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...Andrew Middleton 2/23/15 History 100c The Jungle: Diluted Dreams From the 1880’s though the 1920’s, industries in America were steadily on the rise, followed diligently by its population. Immigrant’s traveled from across the world with a single shared fantasy in mind: that the wealthy and prosperous America, through its abundant opportunities, would provide them with a respectable form of employment and a presentable household for the upbringing of their families. The Jungle is a very distinct type of book that looks at various aspects of the past and modern day inter-workings of the American society. Witten by Upton Sinclair, his main purpose was to raise awareness of his anit-capitalism message by means of specific details and cunning symbolism. The arrangement of the novel depicts the corrupt capitalism in the years of the early 1900's. The book captures the dramatic changes occurring at the turn of the turn of the turn of the century. Its central focus is to portray the unspeakable working conditions in the meat-packing industry in many large cities and specifically in Chicago. Western America was known as the frontier because of its undeveloped landscape but Manifest Destiny was initiating industrial growth that was disperse throughout the country. All these job openings attracted thousands and thousands of immigrants into America and especially into the urban parts of major cities because most of them had no other means of bringing in money. They were unaware of the...
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...The cruel economic system in The Jungle led Jurgis and others to a life of oppression and injustice. The corruption of capitalism affects everyone around it and eventually leads every character to destruction. From Jurgis and Ona to the bad conditions of the city, the industry set up is detrimental in more ways than not. Upton Sinclair portrays the evils of capitalism throughout the book as the characters’ motives become distorted. The government system causes calamity to run all throughout Packingtown. Packingtown is a city filled with crime and lawlessness, caused by the inadequate system set up by the the people in authority. “That was their law, that was their justice! Jurgis stood upright, trembling with passion,” (167). For an example,...
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...The Horrors of Packingtown Living and Dying in Packingtown, Chicago is an expert from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which told the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant trying to survive in Chicago. Sinclair wrote The Jungle with hopes to achieve better working conditions all around the United States, but also to show the corruption and evil that come with capitalism. His book was an instant best seller and caused massive reform of the meatpacking industry, however, this reform was focused on health concerns rather than concerns for the workers. “‘I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,’ he said.” (BLACKWELL) Living and Dying in Packingtown, Chicago opens into the struggles of life at home for immigrant family with the painful death of their child, Kristoforas, who had eaten some tubercular beef which was unfit for export. The family could not afford a grave so the mother, Elzbieta, went in tears to beg from their local neighbors for a proper burial. This opening brings the reader instantly into the situation this family is in and what dire state of poverty they faced. Jurgis, having no job and a family to feed, went to the dreaded fertilizer plants which were talked about mostly in feared rumor. “Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell.” (p. 74) Only the desperate resort to working at the fertilizer plants which was where all the “tankage”...
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...When first reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, I couldn’t help but think of the term “social Darwinism”. This is a term that we learned in history last year and ultimately connects the biological concept of “survival of the fittest” to human interaction in society. This impression is seen many times throughout Sinclair’s work, but was most accurately depicted in the passages where Jurgis gets involved in politics and becomes friends with upper-class men such as Jack Duane. It can be seen that in this time of his life, Jurgis had lost all morals that he held when first coming to America from Lithuania. Within these passages we see Jurgis robbing innocent men simply to prevent being lost at the bottom of the food chain that is their society,...
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