Essay/Term paper: The jungle by upton sinclair

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Position Papers

There are many characters in The Jungle. These characters vary

widely in their professions, social status, and economic status. The

main character in the novel is a Lithuanian named Jurgis Rudkus. His

wife is Ona Lukoszaite, also a Lithuanian. Their son is named

Antanas. Mike Scully is a powerful political leader in Packingtown.

Phil Connor is a foreman in Packingtown, "politically connected"

(through Scully), and a man who causes much trouble for Jurgis. Jack

Duane is an experienced and educated criminal who is also

"politically connected". A man called Ostrinski is a half-blind

tailor who teaches Jurgis about Socialism. There are also the

members of Ona"s family, each of whom play minor roles in the story.

The story opens with the feast at Jurgis and Ona"s wedding in

America, but soon flashes back to the time before they left

Lithuania. Jurgis met Ona at a horse fair, and fell in love with

her. Unfortunately, they were too poor to have a wedding, since

Ona"s father just died. In the hopes of finding freedom and fortune,

they left for America, bringing many members of Ona"s family with

them.

After arriving in America, they are taken to Packingtown to find

work. Packingtown is a section of Chicago where the meat packing

industry is centralized. They take a tour of the plant, and see the

unbelievable efficiency and speed at which hogs and cattle are

butchered, cooked, packed, and shipped. In Packingtown, no part of

the animal is wasted. The tour guide specifically says "They use

everything about the hog except the squeal," (The Jungle, page 38).

Jurgis"s brawny build quickly gets him a job on the cattle killing

beds. The other members of the family soon find jobs, except for the

children. They are put into school. At first, Jurgis is happy with

his job and America, but he soon learns that America is plagued by

corruption, dishonesty, and bribery. He is forced to work at high

speeds for long hours with low pay, and so is the rest of the family.

He is cheated out of his money several times. The children must

leave school and go to work to help the family survive. This means

they will never receive the education they need to rise above this.

Ona is not permitted to take a holiday, even for her own wedding.

After the birth of her first son, Antanas, Ona soon becomes pregnant

again. She becomes very upset, but will not tell Jurgis why. After

she fails to come home one night, Jurgis confronts her. She breaks

into tears and tells Jurgis that a foreman named Connor has forced a

sexual relationship on her. Jurgis curses her and runs off to find

Connor.

After beating Connor to a pulp, Jurgis is sent to jail for thirty

days. The judge refuses to listen to Jurgis"s story seriously. When

Jurgis is released, he finds that his family has moved to an even

poorer neighborhood, and Ona is in labor at that very moment.

Neither the baby, nor Ona, who went into labor two months early,

survive. Jurgis pulls himself together for the sake of Antanas and

gets a job. When Antanas drowns in the mud-filled street, Jurgis

gives up on Packingtown and his family. He hops aboard a passing

train, and leaves Chicago.

Jurgis enjoys a "hobo" life, wandering across the country. When

winter comes, he is forced to return to Chicago. He gets into a

fight in a bar and is sent to jail. In jail, he meets Jack Duane, an

experienced criminal. After being freed from jail, Jurgis and Duane

team up in a luxurious, but risky life of crime. Jurgis learns about

the connections between criminals, police, politics, and big

business. He becomes a member of this complex network and moves into

politics. He runs into Connor again, and beats him to a pulp a

second time. Connor"s political connections cause Jurgis to lose all

his acquired profit. Jurgis is back to wandering the streets.

To keep warm, Jurgis walks into a Socialist meeting. After the

meeting, he is introduced to a man named Ostrinski, who teaches

Jurgis about Socialism. Jurgis agrees completely with the political

party"s ideals, and becomes an active member. As the story ends, the

results of an election are being received. The novel concludes on a

positive note, showing that the Socialist party made significant

progress all across the country.

The Jungle is a novel that casts an evil light on America, business,

and politics. It promotes the concept of Socialism, emphasizes

corruption in our society, and makes wage-earners look like slaves.

The book mentions nothing about the benefits of Capitalism.

Jurgis and his family moved from Lithuania to America, expecting a

better life. Instead of telling a story about their success through

hard work and dedication, Upton Sinclair tells a story about how they

were cheated before they even got off the boat. Throughout the

story, people preyed on the family"s ignorance. During the passage

to America, an agent appeared to be helping them but was really

cheating them. After arriving, they were constantly cheated out of

their money. The house they bought was a total fraud, full of hidden

expenses. Many members of the family were able to get jobs only

through bribery. Ona was exploited by Connor, who threatened to have

her, Jurgis, and the rest of the family fired if she refused the

relationship.

When Jurgis left Packingtown, he lived by thievery, selfishness, and

bribery. When Jurgis switched to this amoral lifestyle, he finally

became successful. The foremen (and foreladies) of Packingtown also

lived by corruption. They fired union members, cheated people out of

their pay, and required "gifts" before hiring people. When a

foreman"s boss learned of this, he required "gifts" from the foreman

to keep quiet. The police were also corrupt. They let robbers go,

and demanded a percentage of what the robbers had taken. The

politicians placed friends on the city payroll, accepted bribes from

criminals, and bribed the police to avoid arrest.

In the book, anyone who earned a living through honesty and hard

work was trapped in poverty. Anyone who lied and cheated to make a

living was wealthy. This was the way a Capitalistic society was

presented in the book. It showed that a hard worker was not

rewarded, and was disposed of when he/she became a burden. The book

portrayed an honest, hardworking lower class, and a dishonest, lazy

upper class. No middle class was described.

Toward the end of the book, Upton Sinclair shows the reader how to

solve Capitalism"s problems: replace it with Socialism. The

Socialist party is promoted as an international political party that

will solve all of the world"s problems. Every member of the party

was told about the "Socialist revolution", when the entire planet

would become Socialist. Not once does the book mention the

possibility of failure. It even claimed Socialists would control the

country by 1912.

The Socialists despised the concept of competition. They considered

the commercial world to be the essence of corruption. The goal of

the Socialist party in The Jungle was to end the corrupt and powerful

Beef Trust. "In the national capital it had power to falsify

government reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an

investigation was threatened it burned its books and sent its

criminal agents across the country," (The Jungle, page 312).

After reading The Jungle, a person would never expect the United

States to survive as a Capitalist country. The only option shown to

the reader is Socialism. The author never mentions the good that

Capitalism has done, nor does he mention any possible flaws in

Socialism. Socialism is presented as perfection, while all other

philosophies are flawed. This makes the novel surprisingly one-sided

and anti-American.

The promotion of Socialism is understandable, though, since Sinclair

himself was a Socialist from an early age. He was brought up in a

poor and not very successful family. This could explain why he

became a Socialist, since one of the main ideals of Socialism is

equality for everyone. This may also explain why he describes

Capitalists as heartless cheats, and describes working people as

oppressed heroes.

The Jungle is, however, more than an advertisement for Socialism.

It describes the horrors of the meat packing industry in great

detail. People were forced to work from before sunrise to after

sunset. In the meat preserving plants, the floors were never dry.

The workers would catch horrible foot diseases, causing them to loose

toes and eventually entire legs. The butchers would be forced to

move at a blinding pace, often cutting themselves and others. They

would still have to work though, or loose their job. Often, the

wounds would become infected, and the butcher would die of blood

poisoning.

The book discusses all the things that were being shipped out to the

civilized world as "meat". Sausages were not really made of sausage

meat. They were mostly composed of "potato flour"; an odorless and

tasteless potato extract with almost no food value. There were the

cattle that had been fed "whiskey malt"; the refuse of breweries.

These animals would become "steerly", or covered with boils. "It was

a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged you knife into them

they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff in your face," (The

Jungle, page 99). According to law, diseased meat could not be sold

out of the state. However, there were no laws restricting it"s sale

inside the state. As a result, the tuberculosis-infected hog meat

never left Packingtown. It was sold to the meat workers at inflated

prices.

Another thing that shocked me while reading the novel was the

cruelty to animals. The animals were packed in freight cars, and

shipped across the country. Many of them died on the trip. Once

reaching Packingtown, each hog had a chain fastened around its leg,

was hoisted into the air, and carried into a room where its throat

was slit. When the cattle reached Packingtown, they were stunned by

electric shock, and dropped onto a conveyor belt, where a man with a

sledgehammer pierced their skulls. These animal existed in very poor

conditions, especially the "steerly" cattle that developed boils.

Despite the cruel conditions, the anti-American sentiment, and the

one-sided views, the novel was well-written. Upton Sinclair did an

excellent job of describing the massive organization and efficiency

of Packingtown. It is clear that he despised Packingtown, for being

a center of Capitalism and for its working conditions, but he was

impressed with it. Packingtown slaughtered, processed, packed, and

shipped hundreds of thousands of cattle and hogs every day. It ran

twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and never stopped. Even

during holidays and during union strikes, Packingtown still ran at

full speed.

Now that I have read The Jungle, I am amazed that our country

survived to be the world superpower it is today. I am even more

amazed that we did not all die from eating food made in such poor

conditions. The novel did not persuade me to become a Socialist, but

I did consider a vegetarian lifestyle. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed

reading it.