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Social Darwinism In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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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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