...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 Gentlemen of the Jungle "Peace is costly, but it's worth the expense." The theme of this text could be patience. How patient you can be before doing something for yourself or how far can you go for somebody else without getting anything? The story is about a man living in an animal world; he has a little hut in peace and quiet. One day there is a hurricane and Mr. Elephant seeks shelter at the man's hut, but with no room for them both, the elephant kicks the man out in the hurricane. This leads to a trial where the animals treat the man unfairly and give the hut to the elephant. In most cases, the man would surely win this trial by miles because it was his hut and all he did was help a friend. "The Gentleman of the Jungle" is written by Jomo Kenyatta in 1938. The story takes place at the edge of the forest in a fictitious land where animals and humans can talk. It states, ''Once upon a time an elephant made a relationship to a man. One day a heavy thunderstorm broke out, the elephant went to his friend who had a little hut at the edge of the forest.’’ (Line 1-3, pg. 171) The setting is the base of the story, the jungle laws they use because it takes place in the jungle. The relationships between the characters start out well. The story tells us that the elephant and the man are friends. The man shows patience when getting told by the lion that he will get his opportunity to get his hut back. This shows that the man has respect for the elders and the animals, "wait until...
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...Whenever you hear "The Jungle" most think of a tropical forest full of thick, brightly colored plants and trees containing various types of animals. However, the book The Jungle is a novel written by the American journalist and muckraker Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to expose the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the meatpacking industry of Chicago. So how do the two relate? The novel's title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism. The life of living in Packingtown is like living in a jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are engaged in a violent, brutal fight for survival. In the book, you only see the use of the word "jungle" once. This being when Jurgis has been drinking and decides to sleep with a prostitute. The novel also seems to compare Jurgis' sexual desire to that of a beast in the jungle. Therefore associating jungles with uncontrolled desires. This being said, the awful conditions of the workers in Packingtown are the result of the uncontrollable human desire for money. The Jungle is about bringing to light human greed and the social damage it does. The images of "beasts" that live in the jungle also depicts violence and brutality – another huge theme of Sinclair's analysis of life in Packingtown. Sinclair describes capitalism as destructive because he shows it...
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...Hassaan Zainul Ms. Luongo English 10 2 November 2015 Upton Sinclair is one of the most recognized authors in history for his writing of “The Jungle”. Upton Sinclair was born is Baltimore, Maryland and he was raised in New York City. His parents were poor while his grandparents were rich and his aunt was wealthy marrying a millionaire. Sinclair often spent night at his grandparents’ house this allowing him insight on how the rich and the poor lived. Sinclair was a keen student, he entered New York City College at the age of fourteen, and he funded his education by writing newspaper and magazine stories. By the age of seventeen he was adequately successful at that time, owning his own apartment and able to give financial support to his parents....
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...Andrew Middleton 2/23/15 History 100c The Jungle: Diluted Dreams From the 1880’s though the 1920’s, industries in America were steadily on the rise, followed diligently by its population. Immigrant’s traveled from across the world with a single shared fantasy in mind: that the wealthy and prosperous America, through its abundant opportunities, would provide them with a respectable form of employment and a presentable household for the upbringing of their families. The Jungle is a very distinct type of book that looks at various aspects of the past and modern day inter-workings of the American society. Witten by Upton Sinclair, his main purpose was to raise awareness of his anit-capitalism message by means of specific details and cunning symbolism. The arrangement of the novel depicts the corrupt capitalism in the years of the early 1900's. The book captures the dramatic changes occurring at the turn of the turn of the turn of the century. Its central focus is to portray the unspeakable working conditions in the meat-packing industry in many large cities and specifically in Chicago. Western America was known as the frontier because of its undeveloped landscape but Manifest Destiny was initiating industrial growth that was disperse throughout the country. All these job openings attracted thousands and thousands of immigrants into America and especially into the urban parts of major cities because most of them had no other means of bringing in money. They were unaware of the...
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...Throughout History there have always been constant debates of ways to improve the lives of U.S citizens by reducing the imperfections of the criminal justice system as well as eliminating the risk of unwholesome products in their everyday lives. For example, in the novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair exposes the unwholesome and unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry during the early 1900s. Furthemore, Sinclair was a 'muckraker' or journalist who exposed the immoral practices of the meatpacking industry in order to push for mandatory meat inspection; however, President Roosevelt viewed the novel as an exaggeration of the truth of the matter and personally inspected the industry's practices themselves. Thereafter, Roosevelt discovered...
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...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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...Where there is light, there is dark. In the eatly 20th century, American industrialization developed rapidly. It made a prosperous society of America, but it also made the dark. Social evils hiding behind the peosperity were reflected by the the lowest level workers lives. “The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.” was written by Upton Sinclair in his book, The Jungle. In his book, he tells about a story of Jurgis Rudkus, who comes to America with full of hopes and dreams with his family from Lithuania and finds a job in Brown's slaughterhouse in Chicago. But life isn’t match with his American dream. Catastrophes ensuse to him. His loses his job because of work injury. His wife, Ona, is raped by her boss. Jurgis is under arrest because of beating the boss. Ona dies in dystocia and his son drowns. Everythings keeps eroding his...
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...The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was one of the few works of art in American history to have a massive and important impact on society. Sinclair was part of an era when people witnessed all that was wrong and corrupt in business and politics, they stood up against it. The Jungle was criticizing the wage of the working people. Upton Sinclair revels intense representations of the shocking lack of hygiene involved in the labor field such as the meatpacking industry in Chicago. After this was exposed it resulted in public outrage to the point where the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act was passed by congress. The Jungle became part of the era when the industry was quickly progressing and millions of immigrants moved to the...
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...Overview Upton Sinclair illustrates The Jungle with frightening detail, obviously making us ponder the question- “Do you think a man could make up a thing like that out of his head?” (page 269). The story follows a young Lithuanian, Jurgis, his newly wed wife, Ona, and the rest of his Slavic family. They immigrate to Chicago and a place called Packingtown, where the only work to be found there is in the cruel, merciless machinery inside the meat and canning factories. Jurgis finds himself quickly in debt without the pay he needs for his family and him; his deprivation of money coming from the lack of pay he’s getting from the painful factories he works in. After losing some of his loved ones to the diseases and terrible treatment of the workers, and the citizens no less, Jurgis and Ona find themselves struggling for survival, and Jurgis finds himself in jail after assaulting his wife’s boss (for raping Ona). The agony eats at him in his thirty days of imprisonment, only to find that his family has lost the house and is living deeply in poverty. What’s worse- his second son is stillborn to his wife who dies giving birth. With the loss of Ona, Jurgis goes into a dark depression, especially with him fighting to find another job. His only joy in his world is his baby son, Antanas, who dies from drowning about a year later. Having lost his only son and desperately trying to find a job, for he was blacklisted, Jurgis gives up and decides to “hobo it” as he hitches a ride and travels...
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...The Jungle is a book about a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkus, he lives in Packingtown which is a Lithuanian area in Chicago. Packingtown gets its name from the meatpacking plants it has. Jurgis lives in a run down shack with his family that he was swindled into paying high amounts of money for. After being injured from many dangerous, dirty jobs he turns to crime and works for a corrupt political boss to make money. One day a miserable Jurgis finds his way to a Political Convention where he finds many others he can relate too in the Socialist Political Party. The most important characters in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair are the books protagonist Jurgis who has good work ethics and believes in the American Dream and the book follows his attempt at...
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...Social Darwinism struck most of the United States’ larger cities, leaving the poor to starve in the streets. Upton Sinclair was a novelist muckraker, someone who reveals corruption within large companies, which led to the creation of one of the most famous activist novels. Sinclair’s The Jungle depicts the utterly disturbing life of an immigrant living in the meatpacking area of Chicago. In the novel, Sinclair graphically describes the working conditions of Jurgis and other poorly paid workers. They were shut in dark, cold working environments with slippery knives which often injured workers accompanied with infection, putting them on their backs for months at a time. Throughout the novel, Sinclair manifests fictional events that often occurred...
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...They introduced the division of labor into their meatpacking plants, replacing the skilled “all-around butcher” with a “killing gang of 157 men divided into 78 different ‘trades,’ each man performing the same minute operation a thousand times during a full workday.” The book portrays the objects poverty, harsh working condition and often dangerous unsanitary living condition. The jungle showed the public what was going on the factories. It showed how owners had no regard for worker safety nor public safety. People getting fingers cut off and being mixed in with meat bad/ diseased food so on. It impacted the world by showing how immigrants were being mistreated and how hard life really was in the United State. The working condition...
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...The Jungle is socialist propaganda (especially towards the end) and should be read as such, and was written to show the filth and danger of the meatpacking business in chicago. And Jurgis has America's Worst Life Ever. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, are a couple who immigrated from Lithuania to Chicago hold their wedding feast at a bar in packingtown (a rough area of chicago). Several Relatives had moved also seeking a better life. However Packingtown the center of Chicago’s meatpacking is filthy and dangerous and job’s are scarce. After the inception the couple realizes they’re in over a hundred dollars of debt. Because in Lithuania it is custom for guest’s to leave money to help pay for the party. However due to the poverty of the town nobody has any money so consequently very little is left to help pay. Jurgis...
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...In the 1900s , meat industry workers worked in awful conditions . A muckraker named Upton Sinclair exposed the meat industry in his book “ The Jungle “ . A muckraker is someone who seeks out the secrets of business or scandel and exposes them for the public to see . Sinclair himself was a writer . The meat produced in the plants was extremely unsanitary . When they first read it , the public was absolutely horrified . In the slaughterhouses , there would be meat that had tumbled onto the floor , in dirt and sawdust , and had billions of germs on it . When it rained , water would fall onto it through cracks in the ceiling . Rats would often gather round the meat , and the meat itself was often covered in rat waste . Dead rats would be thrown...
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