THE JUNGLE BY UPTON SINCLAIR - Book Report/Review Example

THE JUNGLE BY UPTON SINCLAIR Upton Sinclair, one of the most influential of his time, wrote the novel“The Jungle” in the year 1906. Sinclair’s main purpose in this novel was to explain and portray the life of the immigrants in the United States of America. Immigrants from Northern Europe moved to live in American. The novel on a whole explains and condemns the poverty of the immigrants, their living conditions and it throws light on the working conditions for these immigrants in the industry. The despair and hopelessness that prevailed among the immigrants who worked as lower class workers is represented by an example of a huge family of 12 members. Sinclair’s novel became very popular as it stressed on improving the conditions for the industrial workers and also exposed the faults of the system. Upton cleverly uncovered the faults in capitalism (Sinclair). Moreover, this despair is clearly contrasted with those who were in power at that time that is the top management. Sinclair's novel provides a means of depicting the corruption prevalent in those times and the need for changing the American wage slavery (Young, 467). The novel also has a short hand version as it is widely used as a course curriculum in the universities and colleges. The immigration of a huge number of people bought in cheap labor for the industrialists. There were no safety precautions applied by the top management for the lower class workers and an injured worker was easily replaced by a healthy one. Wages were also kept low because many laborers were available to work for tiny amount of money. This showed the prevalent poverty at that time. Children as young as eight were forced to work to earn money and there was no limit for a worker to work per hour of a day. Many multiple families shared single room apartments to live as a result of this poverty. The novel is a fiction though but still is considered close to realism as it depicts the actual conditions of the period in the States. Upton uncovered many harsh truths by relating to a family, the family of Jurgis Rudkus who is also the main character in the novel. Jurgis has a huge family who migrates to the city of Chicago from Lithuania. Jurgis had to work in Chicago's meatpacking industry to save himself and his family from starvation. It is through this main character that the novelist reveals the harshness of the Beef Trust which eventually forced the government to execute regulatory laws. Ona Rudkus is Jurgis's wife who follows her husband to the United States from Lithuania, along with her family. She also works in the meatpacking plants like her husband while Elzbieta Lukoszaite is Jurgis wife, Ona's stepmother. She also struggles to keep her family from starvation and tragically looses two of her children to early death. Jurgis Rudkus and his entire family, consisting of a total 12 members basically came to the States to seek their fortune but the moment the family migrated from Lithuania, they faced serious problems regarding their survival. From the beginning, they have to make compromises to survive. The language barrier and hence their illiteracy in English made them victims of a lending scheme who persuaded them to make bad economic decisions in hope of their own home according to which the family went into debt. This devastated the family altogether as it exhausts all their savings on a sub-standard slum house. Before the migration, the family had thought that Jurgis alone would be able to support them in the United States, but then eventually all of them including the women, children, and Rudkus's sick father had to work. The ways that the family uses to stay alive and to find jobs lead to their moral as well as physical decay. The family finds jobs at the gigantic meatpacking plants and slaughter houses. Jurgis and his family realize the hardships associated with living in the States and also what they had thought before migrating was just a wild dream. For them, America was nothing more than a land of poverty. All of the lower class workers at the slaughter houses were poorly paid and subject to unfair labor practices with dangerous working conditions. Moreover, the neighborhoods of the meat packaging plants were dirty and filthy. The workrooms of the slaughter plants were not heated during the winters and as a result many men often suffered frostbites. The winter condition was so worst that many workers desperately put their feet into hot steaming carcasses of cattle, plus the steam was very thick in the butchering rooms which created a dangerous environment to work in. The family comes to know the real conditions behind the meat packaging plants and the processing. The plants were rat infested and garbage was seen everywhere but there was no way out except that Jurgis's family had to work to survive, including Jurgis's dying father and his pregnant wife. The family saw how the sick cattle and pregnant cows were processed for meat. The sausages were made of heterogeneous animal parts and were dirty and filth with rat poison. The bosses of the slaughter houses demanded gifts in the form of money from their workers and this exposed the unjust system in the industry. The workers in the top management were corrupt which resulted in low living conditions for the lower class workers. Thus, many families made their children to work including Elzbieta who made her son work in the slaughter house with herself. As a result, her son was eaten away alive by rats. Marija, who is depicted as Ona’s cousin in the novel also works in a factory but the factory closes down suddenly without prior warning which let her to starve. It reopens after sometime but with vague wages as the workers were not paid the full amount per hour instead, when a worker worked say 50 minutes of an hour and had no work for the 10 minutes left, his whole hour’s pay was cancelled. The family indeed faced a harsh world in the city of Chicago. Sinclair has mentioned in his novel that the government inspector, who was responsible for inspecting the cattle for diseases, was easily distracted by the top management on purpose so that the diseased cattle could be slaughtered and processed. Antanas, Jurgis and Ona’s son worked in the pickling rooms of the slaughter plant and sees waste products being thrown into heaps of beef for processing and subsequent human consumption. Sinclair also states in his novel that Jurgis also saw the processing of the fetus of a cow for human consumption. Moreover, Jurgis learns how undesired parts of the cattle like heart and tongue were dyed with chemicals and sold as pure lard. These charges in the novel by the author forced the United States government to enforce pure food laws. After a number of deaths in the family like the death of Elzbieta’s son by rats and the death of Jurgis’s wife Ona while giving birth to her second child, the family finds itself in further catastrophe. After Ona dies while giving birth to her second child because of the lack of money to pay to the doctor, Antanas drowns himself in despair. Jurgis leaves for the countryside but becomes a transient and the moment returns back to Chicago, he finds himself penniless and starving. He is forced to beg on the streets and do various jobs other than the meat packaging industry. He also find himself in and out of jail several times. During one instance while in the jail, Jurgis meets a con man who persuades Jurgis into the life of crime. As a criminal, Jurgis learns about different forms of corruption like in politics and in various industries such as steel, packing-plants and even in the Chicago police force. Though Jurgis had become corrupt, but his personal inner self continued to haunt him. He meets a socialist party speaker and is instantly transformed by him. Jurgin gets employed by a fellow socialist and tries to support his family (Book notes). Upton through his novel, “The jungle” has cited that capitalism unequally distributes the ruling of an industry with the dominance in the hands of certain top post managers and workers. Moreover, the politicians and several business men took advantage of this error and did not allow the betrayed immigrants to raise their voices against hardships and cruelty. They were treated cruelly and the implications proved leading to their deaths. In a certain time of the year, the factories used to slow down their production, leaving many families to starve. Workers used to show up for a full day, but were only paid for few hours. This was indeed an illegal labor practice and the novel helps to throw light on the very issue pertaining to labor matters. Upton Sinclair has particularly kept the title of his book “The Jungle” to convey the social aspect of the era. The life in the meat packaging industry and hence the processing unit resembled a jungle because of the inappropriate attitude and tyrannies towards the lower class workers. As animals of different species do not care for each other in a jungle, similarly, the top most management hardly cared for the deprived workers. The lust for power and money can make the authority corrupt, similarly the way an animal craves for food. The novel’s title hints towards the corruption of capitalism. It allows the characters of the novel to be portrayed as prey (Predators and Prey) The petrifying working conditions, as well as child labor and women alike that Sinclair has exposed in his very novel clearly indicated the corruption which took place inside the slaughtering plants. Upton Sinclair though has exposed the pathetic working conditions of the industry workers at the turn of the twentieth century, but the government including the public showed its concern over food safety more than the poverty conditions. Sinclair has also awfully admitted that the public cared more about the bad meat being processed rather than the living conditions of the lower class workers (Sullivan, 222). Sinclair through his novel intended to change people’s minds. The novel because of its compelling power still interests readers of today long after the circumstances under which it was written. It is beyond doubt that the novel “The Jungle” helped in shaping up of American political history. President Theodore Roosevelt sent two sets of investigators to Chicago as a result of this very novel (Thomson). Oddly enough, Sinclair did not achieve his goal of stressing the importance of the conditions of the laborers in the industry because the society rather focused on the atrocities of the how their food was being prepared in factories. As already mentioned the reason for the title of the novel being selected, the immigrant family is eaten alive by politicians and corrupted employers. Jurgis later educates himself on politics and English and tries to bring a change. The change comes late as most of his family had either died or had run away. Brian R price quotes “one could say the end result of the novel is downright socialist propaganda disguised as a fictional heart breaking story of a crumbling family”. The author, Upton Sinclair fails to recognize the errors in his own ideas and works while putting his political stance into the novel. This is regarded as one of the critical weaknesses of the novel. While Sinclair has made many points on arduous labor laws and corruption by quoting different examples, at the same time he has failed to point out that he depiction the States as a pure capitalistic nation; something which is not true. Even after some critical weaknesses, Sinclair's work did not go in vain; he displayed his strength of writing which eventually led the American government to ponder over the conditions at that time. The president, Theodore Roosevelt condemned the old meat being processed, the dead rats being put into the sausage processors, and the diseased cattle being butchered while inspectors were already on a round in the factory. Roosevelt's government officials made a report on the corruption which was indeed true and therefore, Roosevelt instantaneously started to enforce the Food and Drug Administration into effect. The administration was responsible to set laws regarding consumer products and related standards in food processing. Two acts, namely the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were also passed. The purpose of these two acts was to help stabilize meat sales. Sinclair stated "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." This may be true as the meat industry saw a huge decline in meat sales thereafter in both the international and national markers. Although this may claim to reflect a negative impact of the novel altogether but it basically proved beneficial and came out as one of the strengths’ of the novel. Different people view the novel by different aspects. Some perceive it as a great example of how capitalism is exposed while some critics view the novel as an exaggeration of the prevalent conditions at that time of era. The novel therefore is a controversial piece of work that invokes many arguments (Price). I believe the novel is an excellent source of information and realization of the conditions of the laborers in the United States during the early 20th century. It tells us about a depressing story of an immigrant family and their dream of America which is clearly contradicted by what they go through in the States. The book inspired many people and especially the U.S government to enforce regulatory laws in the industry; therefore it is a must read for history and economic purposes. Moreover, the novel gives us a sense of humanity and how cruel one can be who is at a top position. This sense of humanity is, I believe the main essence of what a reader feels while reading the novel. BIBLIOGRAHY Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006. Bloodworth, William. Upton Sinclair. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1977. Gale, Thomson. The Jungle from BookRag. 2005-2006 Harris, Leon. Upton Sinclair: American Rebel. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, Co. 1975 1991. Jane Jacobs, Introduction to The Jungle The Jungle from BookRags Book Notes.2000-2009) July . The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1906 Predators and Prey in Upton Sinclair’s the jungle. Price, Brian R. A literary analysis of the jungle by Upton Sinclair: A summary and explanation of the jungle. 15 March 2009. Scott, Ivan. Upton Sinclair, the Forgotten Socialist. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. Sinclair, Upton B. The Jungle. 1906 Sinclair, Upton. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. 1962. Sullivan, Mark. Our Times. New York: Scribner. 1996. Ward, Selena & Phillips, Brian. Sparknote on The Jungle. 7 December 2008 Young. The Pig That Fell into the Privy. Read More