The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) - Essay Example

Big businesses were enjoying an unprecedented reign of opportunism and the welfare of members of the public had begun to seriously deteriorate. Sinclair’s focus in this book was to expose the corrupt practices and the unsanitary conditions that were rampant in the meatpacking industry. This book was published in 1906 and it was successful in snaring the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who set up a commission to enquire into the meatpacking industry which finally resulted in the passage of the Beef Inspection Act.

The story focuses upon the ordeals of one Lithunian family that is forced to reconsider its idealistic view that hard work and morality will lead to material success and happiness. The reality they encounter is that America is a place of greed and exploitation, where it is only immorality, corruption, crime and graft which are the means that will ensure material success. Sinclair’s book demonstrates how immigrants who came to America with the will to work hard in their pursuit of the American dream, were victimized, harassed and exploited.

Throughout the book “The Jungle,” Sinclair focuses upon the meatpacking industry in Chicago but uses it as a means to demonstrate the evils of capitalism. According to Sinclair, capitalism breeds social inequality and an obsession with the accumulation of wealth that leads individuals to engage in unscrupulous practices for the express purpose of garnering wealth. Through the events in the book, Sinclair suggests that capitalism is a system that benefits only a few individuals and big businesses, hence it needs to be replaced with an alternative system such as capitalism which works for the benefit of everyone and ensures that the common man is not exploited by greedy capitalistic elements.

Throughout the early part of the book, Sinclair therefore focuses on demonstrating the evils of capitalism, which in effect, destroys the many for the benefit of the few.