Essay on The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jr. - 608 Words

At the beginnings of the 1900s, some leading magazines in the U.S have already started to exhibit choking reports about unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other offenses; which helped their sales to soar. In this context, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposà © on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declaredâ€Å" I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report† (Sinclair, The†¦show more content†¦And he writes of dishonest politicians and tricky real-estate salesmen. At the core of the story, Sinclair tells about the devastation and the falling apart of Jurgiss family as a result of the ruthless, abusive, and oppressive nature of work and life in Packingtown. By the end, Jurgis wanders alone, deprived of all dignity. He comes across a rally of political socialists, hears a speech on socialism, and enthusiastically converts to that cause. In the last chapters of the novel, Sinclair manifests arguments for socialism, in the form of speeches that Jurgis hears. The book ends with an appeal of a socialist speaker to Organize! Organize! Organize! so that Chicago will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS! (Sinclair 372-73) So, according to some critics, it becomes clear that The Jungle is a propaganda destined to promote socialism over capitalism, and to reveal the hollowness of the American Dream, which capitalists define it as being the ability for people to improve their lot and to attain their aspiration for better lives through hard work. Throughout The Jungle, Sinclair portrays the American Dream from a socialist vision, and illustrates it as being a mere fictitious fantasy by the capitalists in order to keep the working class blind to the truth and under their everlasting hegemony. In regards to the American capitalist system, in Sinclair’s viewpoint,Show MoreRelatedEssay on The American Dream in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jr.967 Words   |  4 Pages(dictionary.com). Upton Sinclair gained fame in the early 1900’s from his muckraking novel, The Jungle, describing the life of a young Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis, living in Chicago in pursuit of the American dream. Jurgis found out that America isn’t as good as it appeared; with higher wages came more expensive goods, and with cheaper houses came higher interest rates. The Jungle, a fictional novel, tells of the real horrors of working in a Chicago meat packing factory. Sinclair had gone undercoverRead MoreA Comparison of the Legacy of Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and Rachel Carsons Silent Spring1725 Words   |  7 Pages 1906 would see the publication of Upton Sinclairs The Jungle, pushing through major reforms of the meatpacking industry and eventually causing the government t o take actions to protect the health of its people; almost fifty years later, the publication of Rachel Carsons novel Silent Spring would invoke a similar, but changed response to the threat of DDT. Although both would lead to government legislation creating major changes, the original intentions of the authors themselves differedRead MoreMy Favorite Book is The Jungle by Upton Sinclai610 Words   |  2 Pagesof them have impressed me as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To me this book is one of the finest books in the world. In fact this novel is so remarkable that it made history and changed the course of events. The Jungle’s excellent qualities have made it my favorite book. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was first published in the United States in 1906. This book became an immediate success as it portrayed the corruption within American business and government. Sinclair based the novel on the American meatpackingRead MoreThe Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Fame for the Wrong Reason Essay2798 Words   |  12 Pagesin Packingtown, the meatpacking district of Chicago. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle portrays life through the eyes of a poor workingman struggling to survive in this cruel, tumultuous environment, where the desire for profit among the capitalist meatpacking bosses and the criminals makes the lives of the working class a nearly unendurable struggle for survival. The novel The Jungle is a hybrid of history, literature, and propaganda. Sinclair, a muckraking journalist of the early 1900s exposed toRead More The Jungle: A Close Examination Essay2731 Words   |  11 Pagesthe soul grow sick and faint. (363)The Jungle, considered Upton Sincla ir’s greatest achievement, shows the deplorable conditions in meat packing plants, as well as moving the reader on the path to socialism, something in which he truly believed in. In order for Sinclair to give accurate details in the book, he spent over a year researching and writing about the conditions on the meat packing plants in Chicago. This first hand experience allowed for Sinclair to see the plight of the â€Å"wage-slavesRead MoreFast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser Essay1205 Words   |  5 Pagesmeal takes more out of Americans to make then at first glance. Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation delves deep into the intricate workings of the fast food industry to expose mistreatment and cruelty towards workers in the business, just as Upton Sinclair had done in the early 1900’s regarding the meat packing industry. Schlosser is able to bring light to the darkness behind the All-American meal through extensive research and personal confrontations of which he has high regards for. Fast FoodRead MoreTheodore Roosevelt s Presidential Evaluation2193 Words   |  9 PagesTheodore Roosevelt Presidential Evaluation The Basics Full Name - Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Political Party- Republican Party and Bull Moose Party Dates of presidency- September 14th, 1901- March 4th, 1909 Job History New York State Assemblyman, 1882-1884 He joined the assembly in Albany on January 1882. He was known for his energy and persistent struggle against machine politics; because of this, he earned the name â€Å"Cyclone Assemblyman†. Member of U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1889-1895 As a memberRead MoreHistory of the United States from 1877 to 1917: Industrial Revolution1243 Words   |  5 Pagesleader, reformer, and educator, advocated for the tactics of racial solidarity, peace, and non-confrontation which formed the foundation of many of the approaches used by Civil Rights leaders (Booker T. W.E.B). A good example is Martin Luther King Jr. However, his idea of conformity largely served to justify the inequality and segregation that the whites were perpetuating against the blacks. Most evident to me is his speech in 1895 which came to be referred to as the Atlanta â€Å"Compromise† SpeechRead MoreEssay about The Mass Media in Princess Dianas Life4852 Words   |  20 PagesCabin, anti- slavery might never have been a major cause of the Civil War (Levy, 1999, p.93)In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a book entitled The Jungle. Using groundbreaking techniques in investigative reporting, Sinclair exposed to the public the deplorable conditions at a Chicago me at packing industry. Sinclair worked undercover, then wrote about the conditions he observed in his book. The Jungle changed the way food products were handled in the United States, when in response to the book, the governmentRead MoreHenry David Thoreau4404 Words   |  18 Pageswhile praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreaus philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.[2 Thoreaus stance was always much less extreme than many of his individual, sometimes inconsistent statements suggest. Theoretically he believed that that government was best that governed