...Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Upton Sinclair wrote his book The Jungle in 1906. This book was a huge success. Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. Sinclair grew up poor with his mother and father. His mother sent him to his richer family on his mother's side. He started to write children’s stories and humor pieces in magazines at age 14. He also he started writing stories at age 16. At 18, he graduated from New York City University. After the success of The Jungle, Sinclair started to write more books with a political message. To write the book, The Jungle, Sinclair had to go undercover at a meat packing factory and expose how the industry had mistreated workers and had unsanitary conditions. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is the book that he is most known for because it was able to change the law, it fit into a popular kind of writing called muckraking, and his political views were different from most peoples’ in America....
Words: 868 - Pages: 4
...Whenever you hear "The Jungle" most think of a tropical forest full of thick, brightly colored plants and trees containing various types of animals. However, the book The Jungle is a novel written by the American journalist and muckraker Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to expose the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the meatpacking industry of Chicago. So how do the two relate? The novel's title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism. The life of living in Packingtown is like living in a jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are engaged in a violent, brutal fight for survival. In the book, you only see the use of the word "jungle" once. This being when Jurgis has been drinking and decides to sleep with a prostitute. The novel also seems to compare Jurgis' sexual desire to that of a beast in the jungle. Therefore associating jungles with uncontrolled desires. This being said, the awful conditions of the workers in Packingtown are the result of the uncontrollable human desire for money. The Jungle is about bringing to light human greed and the social damage it does. The images of "beasts" that live in the jungle also depicts violence and brutality – another huge theme of Sinclair's analysis of life in Packingtown. Sinclair describes capitalism as destructive because he shows it...
Words: 765 - Pages: 4
...1) What conditions and events led to the establishment of the labor movement and the subsequent laws establishing environmental and safety standards in the workplace? Child labor, unsafe working conditions, low pay, chemical poisoning, and explosions all contributed to the need for a labor movement. Upton Sinclair’s book, “The Jungle,” made people more aware of the unsafe working conditions and motivated them to bring about change through protests and unions. In the 1980 OSHA video, the narrator keeps mentioning that it was unfortunate that it took tragedies for certain laws and safety standards to be implemented. For example, 316 men died when a mine collapsed, afterward, the Bureau of Mines was created and safety feature was set in place to prevent similar accidents....
Words: 638 - Pages: 3
...I personally did like the book because of Upton Sinclair’s portrayal of African Americans. For instance, he called African American scab workers “big buck Negros” in chapter 26. And also presenting black scabs as if they are animals, basically in my opinion, showing no knowledge or appreciation for African American culture. But people who are a fan of him will say “that the narrator says that”, but isn’t Upton Sinclair the narrator. Furthermore, he created images of these “big buck Negroes” rubbing elbows with white country girls, knowing that the idea of a black man prancing with a white woman would add fuel to the fire to a white reader based off the time period the novel came out in. Sinclair also states that African Americans’ ancestors were once African savages forced into slavery; now, they are really “free” for the first time “free to wreck themselves.” Another reason I did not like the book because it was sad and too depressing....
Words: 560 - Pages: 3
...Social Darwinism struck most of the United States’ larger cities, leaving the poor to starve in the streets. Upton Sinclair was a novelist muckraker, someone who reveals corruption within large companies, which led to the creation of one of the most famous activist novels. Sinclair’s The Jungle depicts the utterly disturbing life of an immigrant living in the meatpacking area of Chicago. In the novel, Sinclair graphically describes the working conditions of Jurgis and other poorly paid workers. They were shut in dark, cold working environments with slippery knives which often injured workers accompanied with infection, putting them on their backs for months at a time. Throughout the novel, Sinclair manifests fictional events that often occurred...
Words: 1411 - Pages: 6
...simple principle has become corrupted into one that is unfair to the poor and ethnic minorities. Discussing the state of the U.S.’s legal system is a controversial subject to touch upon due to it being one of the major things that keeps order in our society. But it has to be questioned when those of varying races, ethnicities, and class background are being treated significantly worse than the white middle class males that dominate our society today and are met with special treatment. Whether it is the poor who are accused and can't afford to pay for legal representation, or prejudice against certain ethnic groups in the legal system, Upton Sinclair shows the...
Words: 2014 - Pages: 9
...The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was one of the few works of art in American history to have a massive and important impact on society. Sinclair was part of an era when people witnessed all that was wrong and corrupt in business and politics, they stood up against it. The Jungle was criticizing the wage of the working people. Upton Sinclair revels intense representations of the shocking lack of hygiene involved in the labor field such as the meatpacking industry in Chicago. After this was exposed it resulted in public outrage to the point where the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act was passed by congress. The Jungle became part of the era when the industry was quickly progressing and millions of immigrants moved to the...
Words: 507 - Pages: 3
...The rapid industrial expansion led to a booming growth in the economy. The most prominent businessmen of this century were Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. These men had an enormous amount of money and were very powerful. By implementing monopolies and trusts, they built personal fortunes and corporations that made the American economy prosper. In the Jungle, Rudkus explains the struggles he has to go through in order to have an “American opportunity.” In the Jungle, Upton Sinclair argues, “A very few days of practical experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a land of high prices” (Sinclair, 31). An organization that spoke out against low wages and the unemployment rate was the Knights of Labor. Rising in the 1880s, the Knights of Labor brought skilled and unskilled workers together to form one union. This organization did not only limit men but women and African Americans as well. The goal was to improve the lives of the middle...
Words: 967 - Pages: 4
...Upton Sinclair authored The Jungle in order to expose Americans to the plight of the lower classes by telling the story of an immigrant extended family that travels to America in the hopes of finding a new beginning. America was “a place of which lovers and young people dreamed,” (Sinclair 27) but Sinclair shows us that this dream was actually a nightmare through his depiction of the cruel reality where the immigrants were unable to improve their lives and were powerless to prevent themselves from experiencing many tragedies, most of which were directly or indirectly caused by the upper-class. In order to emphasize the relative strength and weaknesses of the working class and those in power, he entitled the book The Jungle, and included fictitious stories to emphasize the helplessness of the immigrants, despite their willingness to work. By making this a work of fiction, instead of a non-fiction book and recounting the true, horrible stories of the people he had encountered and interviewed during his thorough research, he was able...
Words: 986 - Pages: 4
...In the 1900s , meat industry workers worked in awful conditions . A muckraker named Upton Sinclair exposed the meat industry in his book “ The Jungle “ . A muckraker is someone who seeks out the secrets of business or scandel and exposes them for the public to see . Sinclair himself was a writer . The meat produced in the plants was extremely unsanitary . When they first read it , the public was absolutely horrified . In the slaughterhouses , there would be meat that had tumbled onto the floor , in dirt and sawdust , and had billions of germs on it . When it rained , water would fall onto it through cracks in the ceiling . Rats would often gather round the meat , and the meat itself was often covered in rat waste . Dead rats would be thrown...
Words: 449 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 2352 - Pages: 10
...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...
Words: 949 - Pages: 4
...In Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle , there are many different types of people and themes. Like most literature there is a theme of heroism in one of the characters in particular. The everyday hero in this novel has to have been Jurgis. This is due to him embodying the qualities of an everyday hero while being under the stress and conditions he had to endure. He also never once changes his strength or courage throughout the novel. An everyday hero is someone that stays true to himself and protects others. Jurgis, while doing this, managed to keep his family afloat even among the many tragedies. Due to where he grew up, he is affected by ignorance. However, rather than be a detriment, this ignorance gives him a new outlook on the awful life...
Words: 422 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 1217 - Pages: 5
...In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, he exposes the issues and corruption within Chicago’s meatpacking industry. Through the use of muckraking Sinclair is able to help make the industry a safer place to work by describing the harsh conditions the workers faced making Mike Scully is the antagonist of the novel. The owners of the companies offer little pay and do everything in their power to keep the workers oppressed. While Mike Scully controls the stockyards through the use of schemes to keep the immigrants poor and break their spirits. Scully owns the housing company in packingtown that sells houses to immigrants, but writes a contract that he knows foreigners would not understand. By using complicated legal jargon it tricks them into paying for hidden expenses that causes them to...
Words: 849 - Pages: 4
