Essay: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair is a novel that closely followed the meat packing industry and the secrets behind the factories that powered it. It went into depth about the encounter’s immigrants had with their bosses and the poor conditions they were forced to work in. This novel successfully brought the attention of civilians to the harsh working conditions immigrants were willing to work in, for small wages, and the little benefits they were given by the factory owners.
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle was written about an immigrant family that had recently traveled to Chicago, from Lithuania. The young man, Jurgis, and the woman, Ona, both decide to celebrate their marriage at a location near “Packingtown”, as many referred to the area where the packing factories were located. They settle near this town and begin looking for jobs as they realize they need to pay the event center and eventually get hired at a factory. Jurgis is the first one to get a job as well as some of Ona’s family members, they work hard to earn as much money as they possibly can despite the little bit they are offered as their wages. After deciding that they will no longer stay at the boarding house, they are forced into a contract to purchase a home which only makes their budget harder to manage. As expenses continue becoming a problem, the younger children and Jurgis’s father are forced to work in places that do not care for them as individuals, people take part of their wages and Jurgis’s father eventually becomes overworked to the point where he passes away.
As the months go on, Jurgis has to look for other jobs, however the conditions in which he worked only got worse. He began working in slaughter houses where the workers were easily injured and sometimes even lost limbs in the process of packaging the meat. On the other hand, after one of Ona’s cousins Marija loses her job, Jurgis begins learning about the way the industry is powered by politicians and corruption. As he hopes to slowly progress into a better life, Ona becomes pregnant and has to continue working. She eventually gives birth to a baby boy, Antana, and works just as hard as the others to make ends meet for their family.
Sinclair makes the unfair treatment of immigrants a large part of the novel. He does so by describing the factories as not having heat during the winter and writing about the injuries the men and women endure. For instance, Jurgis suffers from an ankle injury that makes working difficult but is never able to recover without having to worry about how his family will survive. He is never offered money as it was the factories fault that he was injured, instead he gets fired and once again finds himself with no money to contribute.
Not having a job and not finding many employment options he becomes frustrated and has to work at a fertilizing plant. He eventually finds out that Ona’s boss had forced her to sleep with him as she is pregnant and is arrested for assaulting the man. This once, again showed the unfair treatment and irony of justice that the workers faced. Later Jurgis faces a significant loss as Ona and the baby die as she is giving birth. He begins to try and find a positive side of life and finds a better job. However, as soon as things began getting better, Antana passes away as a result of drowning. Eventually, everything Jurgis has experienced in the past months appears to impact him too much to the point where he loses all hope he had left, and he leaves Packingtown.
Jurgis continues having trouble making money as he keeps getting injured on the job and has to pay his medical bills. He becomes involved in burglaries and violence and eventually begins working for a corrupt politician. Despite being a part of these dangerous jobs, he makes enough money to not worry about his wage everyday as much as he used to. He eventually loses his job and has no contact with his remanding family, thus he lives on the little bit of money he is given by other people. The others have also had a hard time and it results in Marija having to become a part of a prostitution ring and becoming addicted to drugs.
At last, Jurgis finds out about the socialist party and likes their ideals and the way they inspire others . After attending rallies and listening to speeches he too becomes inspired. He begins working at a hotel run by the socialists and eventually is reunited with some of Ona’s family.
The authors purpose of this novel is to inform other about the life that immigrants experienced as they worked in factories, in Packingtown. The workers behind this industry were forced to work in factories that had no heating system in the winter . They were continuously injured in the workplace and then fired as if it wasn’t a result of the working conditions. Sinclair’s writing is simple and easy to understand as he explained everything Jurgis’s and Ona’s family experienced in Packingtown. For the most part the interpretation is done by the author himself. Interpretation is present as Sinclair describes the effects the factories working conditions had on the workers. As a result of not having good paying wages, the workers turned to alcoholism and sometimes even prostitution. They were fired for being injured and then had to pay hospital bills they could not afford.
The contextualization of Sinclair’s thesis is placed in a wider context of history, which lets the reader get the full picture of everything the workers were experiencing. There are many connections with other things that are happening during this time period, such as the formation of the Socialist party. Because everything is linked to one another all of the connections make the purpose of the book more significant and easier to understand, as they all affect one another.
The main form of sources used in this novel are narrative, for Sinclair is narrating the life of Jurgis from their firsthand experience of the meatpacking industry. Analysis is also used as their lives are analyzed to get a feel of the industry and the way it affected each individual in their own way. For instance, Sinclair narrated Jurgis’s experience as he left the hospital and was left with nothing else but pennies and the street to stand and beg others for money. He did not use other primary/secondary sources to write the novel.
Sinclair’s writing style is simple to follow, however sometimes the words used in the writing were difficult to understand. The only reason it was difficult to read was because foreign words were sometimes present and not translated. The flow of the book is easy to keep up with and makes the chronology obvious without using a pattern that was difficult to understand.
As the reading progresses, there is a sense of bias in the novel. It appears that Sinclair felt for the immigrant workers and the work conditions they had to be a part of. The purpose of the book is to expose the meatpacking industry along with many others, thus giving the reader an idea of bias. His agenda was to write about the harsh working conditions in these factories and show other the circumstances the workers were often put into.
The critical observation of this book is that it was well written and successfully informative as far as introducing the idea of corruption and unfair treatment in the factories. Sinclair followed a clear agenda for his writing and continued writing a novel that was easy to follow and understand as a historical writing.
Upton Sinclair’s background consists of writing over a hundred books in a variety of genres apart from historical writing. His most famous writing was The Jungle as his popularity began in the twentieth century after releasing this book which came as a surprise to many. Sinclair was recognized as he received a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1943, making him a credible fiction writer.
Ultimately, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel that truly lived up to its purpose and informed others about the obdurate corruption that the packing industry was run on. His argument of unfair treatment and the effects it had on the community of immigrants was well written and clearly thought out.
U.S. History
February 9, 2019
The Jungle
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, 1906.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, 1906.
2019-2-10-1549776503