Upton Sinclair: The Jungle (2004, NuVision Publications)
eBook
English language
Published Jan. 5, 2004 by NuVision Publications.
The hero, Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, comes to America with a group of his fellow countrymen to realize the dream of a safe and prosperous life. His hopes are soon crushed when he finds himself in the Packingtown district of Chicago employed in a meatpacking plant. The working conditions are dangerous and unsanitary, and the foremen demand arduous effort from him and his colony of ignorant and uneducated laborers. Workmen had fallen into the vats of dead animals mixed with chemicals and were ground up into meat. The equipment was unsafe, and limbs were lost to the sharp knives. A more gruesome example concerned a little boy who had been given drinks of beer and was left, forgotten, in the cold factory overnight and found eaten by rats in the morning. Corrupt political hacks offer Jurgis a brief respite from hopelessness, but his subjugation by these bosses and their …
The hero, Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, comes to America with a group of his fellow countrymen to realize the dream of a safe and prosperous life. His hopes are soon crushed when he finds himself in the Packingtown district of Chicago employed in a meatpacking plant. The working conditions are dangerous and unsanitary, and the foremen demand arduous effort from him and his colony of ignorant and uneducated laborers. Workmen had fallen into the vats of dead animals mixed with chemicals and were ground up into meat. The equipment was unsafe, and limbs were lost to the sharp knives. A more gruesome example concerned a little boy who had been given drinks of beer and was left, forgotten, in the cold factory overnight and found eaten by rats in the morning. Corrupt political hacks offer Jurgis a brief respite from hopelessness, but his subjugation by these bosses and their immortal deceit intensifies his struggle. Jurgis is overwhelmed in this battle, surrenders to exhaustion, becomes a common thief and a beggar. Here Sinclair presents the remedy for these industrial atrocities--the practical virtues of socialism. Jurgis quickly becomes an advocate of the socialist movement that promises to deliver control of the situation to the working class. This story, from an historical perspective, forced the United States federal government to take action and reform the meatpacking industry by enacting the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.
Five stars for the first 28 chapters, and 1 star for the last 3. The last 3 chapters are such a stark contrast to the rest of the book that if I didn't know better, I would have guessed they were written by a different author. It would be like if Angela's Ashes ended with 3 chapters on why you shouldn't vaccinate your children. It's so illogical and out of place, that it risks ruining the entire book.
(hidden for spoilers, but they are mild spoilers.)
This is not a subtle novel. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker journalist and clearly his intent here was to expose the horrors of unfettered capitalism and the , through the story of an immigrant family trying to survive in the Chicago meatpacking district.
The descriptions are lurid, the plot is melodramatic, and the various trials the main character endures are hard to take. Just when one miserable thing happens there’s another miserable thing, everyone cheats and robs everyone else, half the characters die horribly, it is an unending litany of abuse and injury and lying and death. I had to alternate reading chapters in this book with something lighter because this book was just so dark.
Toward the end the main character discovers socialism, and suddenly everything starts to go right for him (like I said, not a subtle book). While the …
(hidden for spoilers, but they are mild spoilers.)
This is not a subtle novel. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker journalist and clearly his intent here was to expose the horrors of unfettered capitalism and the , through the story of an immigrant family trying to survive in the Chicago meatpacking district.
The descriptions are lurid, the plot is melodramatic, and the various trials the main character endures are hard to take. Just when one miserable thing happens there’s another miserable thing, everyone cheats and robs everyone else, half the characters die horribly, it is an unending litany of abuse and injury and lying and death. I had to alternate reading chapters in this book with something lighter because this book was just so dark.
Toward the end the main character discovers socialism, and suddenly everything starts to go right for him (like I said, not a subtle book). While the book became decidedly more cheerful at this point, it also turned a lot more preachy, and ends feeling like aggressively naked propaganda for the socialist movement.
So, two stars for the quality of the book as a novel. But I did feel this book was worth reading for the echoes of the past in current politics, which gives it another star. The abuses against the workers described in this book are not that far off from what is common behavior today. Different industries, different eras, different immigrant populations, but the same problems. We’ve learned nothing at all in 110 years.
One other note: This book is known for causing such outrage at the time that it led federal slaughterhouse reforms and regulation. But all the actual reforms that happened were around food safety and animal welfare, around avoiding putting diseased animals and spoiled meat into the food supply. Those things were important, of course, but it saddened me that given the popularity of the book there was not a single law changed about the plight of the workers. As Sinclair commented, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
Depressing. Poverty vs the trusts, Chicago politics, homelessness and desperation and immigration. Depressing.
