Upton Sinclairs The Jungle published in 1906 is considered the novel that led to his fame. After writing more than one hundred plays and books and an extreme amount of articles Sinclairs life is considered to be complete. Many of his books, articles, and plays dealt with a wide variety of social issues and Sinclair also assisted in creating the Leagues for Industrial Democracy.
Sinclair is known for his strong socialistic beliefs and his journalistic style. The idea for The Jungle came about when the unsuccessful strike against the meatpacking companies in Chicago took place. Historically this time was horrible for immigrants and other poor families and was also a time of corruption and deceit.
The family that Sinclair has the reader follow is that of Jurgis Rudkus. An immigrant family from Lithuania the author describes their life story during the nineteen hundreds. During that time period the meatpacking factories were the only places an immigrant could find a job. Although the pay was not good some families would be able to survive with everyone working and the Rudkus family almost does.
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Sinclairs main character Jurgis is one of the men working in the slaughter yard at the meat house. He describes the horrors of working there with blood all over everyone all of the time and if a cow or pig would happen to get loose how they could trample anyone to death. A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose. Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned…in the wintertime it was enough to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that you could not make out anything five feet in front of you (114).
This quote is just one of the examples of the dangers the men were in while working at the killing beds. Not only were there dangers at their job but in every section of the plant someone could get injured by a machine or by slipping on the floor. As the meatpacking industry developed through the industrial revolution they had to lay off some of their workers so machines to do the job faster and more efficient could replace them.
Sinclair also wrote about the quality of the meat and how sometimes they would reuse scraps of meat. The floor was filthy, yet they set Antanas with his mop slopping the pickle into a hole that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever; and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old mans task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat! (60-61).
Once this book was published and these supposed truths of the meat-packing plants and the fraud that was occurring in the came to the attention of the Food and Drug Administration there were new meat-packing laws devised, and quite and uproar with everyone the United States that this could on in a factory. Even though today there are certain restriction on how meat is to be processed and how to decide what grade the meat is no one reall!
y know for certain that their meat has not been dropped on the floor or is being reused.
Throughout the novel Sinclair also discusses the meaning and foundation of Socialism which he was a strong member of that party. When Jurgis goes to a meeting for the warmth of the indoors he is listening to a speaker that really motivates him and after the meeting he asks what the speaker was describing or talking about. At this point he is introduced to the idea of Socialism. Jurgis intensely listened to the speaker and how he described the great idea and did not even know what it was about until after the meeting. In Chicago in the 1900s Socialism was just beginning to set up a home with all of the immigrants. The organizers or Comrades had so many people under them in which they directed or taught them about Socialism.
After reading the novel and realizing what occurred in the early 1900s to the immigrants who needed to find homes and or jobs to survive and how either low pay at their job or when buying a house as the characters were tricked people always cheated them. Upton Sinclair also painted a vivid image of Socialism for the reader and not only was this interesting but it was also informing to read. Overall The Jungle was a very well written book providing a vivid picture to past events that some people may not even know about.
