h argues for the benefits of man enjoying nature. Many of the environmentalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were concerned about the improper disposal of sewage in heavily populated urban areas. One such are was the Chicago Garbage Dumps depicted by Sinclair in the excerpt from The Jungle presented here. Unlike the joys of socializing and spiritually uplifting experiences of the children in Central Park, the children in Sinclair’s novel seem trapped in a world of filth with little chance for spiritual development, “there were…great hollows full of stinking green water. In these pools the children played, and rolled about in the mud of the streets: here and there one noticed them digging in it, after trophies which they had stumbled on. One wondered about this, as also about the swarms of flies which hung about on the scene, literally blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor which assailed one’s nostrils, a ghastly odor, of all the dead things of the univer
...