The Jungle

While the works of Upton Sinclair are not widely read today because of their primacy of social change rather than aesthetic pleasure, works like The Jungle are important to understand in relation to the society that produced them. Sinclair was considered a part of the muckraking era, an era when social critics observed all that was wrong and corrupt in business and politics and responded against it. The Jungle was written primarily as a harsh indictment of wage slavery, but its vivid depictions of the deplorable lack of sanitation involved in the meat-packing industry in Chicago resulted in public outrage to the point where Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

The Jungle is a product of the era when industry was rapidly evolving and millions of immigrants came to America, the perceived land of milk and honey. What they often found instead were a lack of jobs, low paying jobs in deplorable conditions and the realization that the American dream was not equally accessible to all. In the novel Sinclair denounces in brutal prose the deplorable conditions of the Chicago stockyard where the men and women workers are diminished to a level lower than the dumb beasts they must slaughter in the fields. Many immigrants were forced to accept such conditions and low wages because they did not have other options. Jurgis wrestles with this dilemma when he thinks of turning down a job in the lowest of all occupations,

Related Essays

The Jungle (1906) The Jungle: A Call to Social Reform In 1906 Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, often cited as America's best proletarian novel, to international acclaim. .... (1869 7 )

The Jungle Upton Sinclair, in his novel The Jungle, explores the lives and work of immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry in Chicago in the early twentieth century .... (1330 5 )

Maggie and The Jungle Stephen Crane's Maggie and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle In "Expanding the Canon of American Realism," Elizabeth Ammons argues that the canon of American realism .... (1051 4 )

The Jungle Sinclair .... works of Upton Sinclair are not widely read today because of their primacy of social change rather than aesthetic pleasure, works like The Jungle are important .... (2070 8 )

Working Conditions in "The Jungle" .... described the terrible working conditions he saw facing those working in the meat-packing industry at the turn of the century in his novel The Jungle, with the .... (1662 7 )

Category: Literature - T