The Jungle

The Uncensored Original Edition

by Upton Sinclair

335 pages

English language

Published Aug. 8, 2003 by See Sharp Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-884365-30-0
OCLC Number:: 52278809

The horrifying conditions in the meatpacking industry in the early 1900's are revealed through the experiences of immigrants as they try to make a living by working in the Chicago stockyards.

88 editions

Mormegil reviewed The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Primal Scream of Socialism

3 stars

I am not a socialist, but I sympathize and agree with may of the problems that socialists point out. The fact that this book led Teddy Roosevelt to break up the Beef Trust is a significant fact. but as a novel I can't rate it any higher than three stars. The spectacle of human cruelty and nihilism is one of the most brutal I have ever read. If you have a family this will read like a horror novel. I'd say it is worth a read as part of history, if you are prepared for it. I am glad to have read it, but I had to pace myself. It is not a good novel, but it wasn't really meant to be a good novel so much as an agent of change. It will make it hard for you to unsee the familiar patterns of greed that grind humans into …

Allen reviewed The Lost First Edition of Upton Sinclair's the Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Review of "The Lost First Edition of Upton Sinclair's the Jungle" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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.

Laura Lemay reviewed The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Review of 'The Jungle' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

(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.”