...Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Upton Sinclair wrote his book The Jungle in 1906. This book was a huge success. Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. Sinclair grew up poor with his mother and father. His mother sent him to his richer family on his mother's side. He started to write children’s stories and humor pieces in magazines at age 14. He also he started writing stories at age 16. At 18, he graduated from New York City University. After the success of The Jungle, Sinclair started to write more books with a political message. To write the book, The Jungle, Sinclair had to go undercover at a meat packing factory and expose how the industry had mistreated workers and had unsanitary conditions. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is the book that he is most known for because it was able to change the law, it fit into a popular kind of writing called muckraking, and his political views were different from most peoples’ in America....
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...“The Jungle” American Protest Literature Analysis 211 In Class Essay In the early 20th century, America was in the process of becoming the most industrial cities in the world. With the increase of factories across the country, stories were becoming more popular. One the most well-known stories from the novel titled “The Jungle”, written by Upton Sinclair. In the American Protest Literature text, I was able to see certain chapters of Upton Sinclair’s novel which peeked my interest. Upton’s techniques of persuading the readers, during that time, were able to have the realization of the harsh conditions of working the factory, however many of the readers have had a negative opinion towards his novel, believing it supporting communistic views. While I was unable to read the full novel, I was able to read certain important chapters from “The Jungle” by reading its section in American Protest. The story is about the Sinclair’s main protagonist named “Jurgis”, who is an immigrant from Europe. When he moves to America with his family, he starts to witness the harsh...
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...Upton Sinclair was an American author who made many changes that contribute to today’s society. He was born on September 20th, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland and passed away November 25th, 1968 in Bound Brook, New Jersey. You see, Sinclair has been through a rough road throughout his life. However, the obstacles he faced only made him achieve so much. What hurt him, made him stronger. For example, his father, Upton Beall Sinclair, was an alcoholic and eventually drank himself to death. Alcohol left Sinclair fatherless with only one parent. When his father was around, the money situation was very limited considering his father spent his earnings on alcoholic beverages. His family was very dependent on his father. Upton Sinclair has once stated , "...as far back as I can remember my life was a series of Cinderella transformations; one night I would be sleeping on a vermin-ridden sofa in a lodging house, and the next night under silken coverlets in a fashionable home. It all depended on whether my father had the money for that week's board.". Sinclair’s...
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...the day. Over the course of seven weeks in 1904, journalist Upton Sinclair entered Chicago’s meatpacking industry and...
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...paved with gold, rather they were welcomed by streets paved with trash and the air filled with smoke and pungent odors, as presented in the book The Jungle. The Jungle is a novel written by Upton Sinclair that displayed the severe working and living conditions that immigrants were forced to deal with. Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes in hand in the late 19th, early 20th century showing us factory conditions, housing conditions, and political corruption through the eyes of an immigrant family. Writing the novel through the eyes of the family allows readers to feel sympathetic towards the family, and is why this book was so effective in bringing attention to the circumstances that the lower class was put in. The Jungle is about an immigrant family from Lithuania who came to the United States being promised a better life, however as soon as...
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...and uneducated and were likely considered peasants in their own countries. Jurgis Rudkus, a fictionalized character in Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle is an example of such a person. Jurgis is from Lithuania and comes to America in search of the American dream. At the beginning of the novel Jurgis comes to America as any other typical European immigrant. He dreams of America as being a land where a man with little can rise through the ranks and ultimately become a man with wealth and prosperity. Jurgis quickly realizes that industrial America is a land of heartache, where a willing man is exploited and used as energy to fuel the never ending industrial machine. At the end of the novel Jurgis learns that the great land of America has its limitations, but at a cost as he loses his wife and child and spends stints in jail for trying to defy the machine. Thus, the novel, The Jungle exemplifies how immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s could not fully realize and achieve the American dream no matter how hard they toiled and worked in the brutal American factories of the time. A jungle is an area of madness and chaos where animals roam free and one either eats or is eaten. Upton Sinclair titled his novel, The Jungle because urban Chicago exemplified all of the same traits that a jungle possessed except for the fact that the jungle of...
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...The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Compared to Modern Day Meat Processing The theme of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is that capitalism is the devil. In the novel, capitalism is made out to be absolutely evil, one reason being that they (the meat companies) willfully put contaminated meat on the market for the oblivious consumers. There are several ways that the meat-packing practices from the novel are similar to how meat is processed today. The first similarity is that slaughterhouses were and have been treating animals very brutally; also, the slaughterhouses in the book were just as unsafe to work in as the slaughterhouses today. People are taking major risks just by going to work. The second similarity is that contaminated meat is being sold and served to the consumers. Another similarity is that if you get hurt on the job and become disabled for several months, a lot of companies will stop paying you or possibly lay you off. The last similarity between The Jungle and modern-day meat processing is that meat companies can and will sue you or throw you in jail if you “spill the beans” or defend yourself or your family. First of all, the slaughterhouses and meat factories are just as filthy, cruel, and unsafe as the slaughterhouses and meat factories from the early nineteen-hundreds (time period in which The Jungle takes place). The novel says that animals are brought into pens, suffer, and are slaughtered. In slaughterhouses today, animals are rounded up, placed somewhere...
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...Emily Andes Mr. Hardy AP English 3 Period 2 Literary Analysis Essay The Jungle and Fast Food Nation have become two worldwide known books for exposing the meat industry, and both were able to change the viewpoints of many people on what they eat. With the meat sales sky rocketing since 1961, our society can thank the inspections and production side of the meat industry. The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, was one of the first books to uncover the gruesome side of the meat packing factories. With this book the world was introduced to the exposed side of the meat factories in unsanitary conditions. Of course, Sinclair’s intention was not to write The Jungle in an effort to unveil the dirty side to the meat packing factories, but it was intended to be a love story between a young couple immigrating from Lithuania to the United States. Along with The Jungle is Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The statistical side of this book was also intended to expose the meat industry but by humiliating fast food restaurants and where their meat products were coming from. People were appalled by the facts this book gave, and they began having new perspectives on fast food. Overall, Fast Food Nation appeals to readers’ senses of ethos pathos and logos then The Jungle does. First of all, Schlosser does a much better job of convincing people to change their views on fast food products and all meat products in general. His diction choices are pedantic and factual, his details become emotional...
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...Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, attempts to portray the corruption within capitalism in virtue of the American Dream. Due to Sinclair’s earlier years of childhood, he was together exposed to poverty as well as the upper-class. In result of being raised by an alcohol salesman and puritan mother, he could understand the glimpses of the upper-class lifestyle that were received from his mother’s wealthy family. Sinclair was very knowledgeable from a young age, thus leading him to college studying journalism in hopes of becoming a novelist. Though many of his books failed, Sinclair continued on to write a best-selling novel that changed the outlook on society. Originally, The Jungle was not accepted into newspapers as he wished, but was released...
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...On February 26, 1906, Upton Sinclair released The Jungle, a novel written about the life of a Lithuanian family moving to America and the hardships they faced there. Sinclair, a Socialist and a muckraker reporter wrote the novel in hopes of gaining supporters of the Socialist party. What he ended up doing was single handily cause the formation of the Food and Drug Administration after he showed the nation what was really happening with their food. Yet looking at the work as what it’s meant to be, an exposure of the negative effects of a capitalist society on the impoverished citizens, was Sinclair’s indictment a fair assessment. The novel The Jungle, follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his new family as they move to America in search of...
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...ourselves. His most notable work was The Jungle in which he exposed the American public to the inhumane and hazardous conditions of the meat packing industry and the injustices faced by immigrants. Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland to an alcoholic father whom he was named after and his...
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...The show has gotten excellent reviews, collecting many Emmy nominations and a Peabody award. And it’s brought to light many problems of today’s women in prisons: unfair use of solitary confinement, racial bias, homophobia, the blatant sexism between male guards and the female prisoners, etc (Kohan). While the show may be fictional in some aspects of the characters and situation, the conditions are real, and the book is true. Like muckraker Upton Sinclair, Piper Kerman wrote her memoir to pull back the disgusting curtain on the condition of women prisoners, and it’s worked (Kerman). Orange is the New Black is an excellent example of an unconventional source of muckraking. It brings to light issues of the reality, while capturing the attention of audiences with its exceptional acting and...
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...In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, the author depicts the story of a young and hardworking man, Jurgis Rudkus, and his family’s struggles in the American economic system of the early twentieth century. Coming from Lithuania with the hopes of a better life, Jurgis’ family lands in Chicago with the pursuit to prosper in the new and exciting land. From the start, the family encounters trouble: scammers in both Lithuania and America deplete the family’s savings, the saloon-keeper at Jurgis and Ona’s wedding overprices them for the amount of alcohol guests have consumed, and the conditions of Packingtown are not what they expected. In the ensuing chapters, the family’s luck changes from bad to worse when a multitude of family members die and jobs are repeatedly taken away from many of the group. Sinclair demonstrates through the optimistic and naive Rudkus-Lukoszaite family that American capitalism is destructive to the common worker and the immigrant class. In the proclaimed “wage slavery,” Sinclair describes how the immigrant population was "dependent for its opportunities of life, upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers” (Sinclair 126). In Chicago, the immigrant...
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...The Jungle and Fast Food Nation are both books that were written to expose the working environments and carelessness that goes into preparing packaged meat. These two books were written to do two things. One of the two things that they were intended for was to outrage the public about how the food was being prepared, and what it took to prepare the food. The second goal was to have reforms done about these processes. Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle in 1906 wanting the public and government to notice the unsafe and unsanitary working conditions and processes that went into making food that was being sold to them. Sinclair’s goal was achieved because the public took notice of the book and all the awful things that were done to the things and food being sold to them. This led to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This act made sure that there were no other substances and drugs in the food sold to the public, hence the name of the act....
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...Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” put in place many reforms. Under the category of health and welfare, the Meat Inspection Act was put established. According to the article “Significant Dates in Food and Drugs Law History”, this act came about after reading Upton Sinclair’s book titled “The Jungle.” Also, food and drug labels became required. Companies had to allow the public to be aware of what was in their products. The article “Social Welfare Developments” mentions labor laws regulated child labor and included approved measures to securing wages of employees involved in public works. When passing these reforms, Teddy Roosevelt found that the more he did, the more popularity he...
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