The Jungle
I believe Sinclair's statement to be entirely accurate. He is aiming for the heartstrings from the very first page. The image of the wedding feast of Jurgis and Ona lulls the reader into a false sense of knowledge about these characters. We would almost believe this could be any wedding for two young people who have the whole world in front of them and nothing but endless promise to look forward to. The whole first chapter is a vivid description of the wedding feast with only an inkling of what their life is truly like slipping through. Sinclair mentions Mikolas and his various bouts with blood poisoning from cutting his hands at work, which laid him up for months at a time with no compensation for the time lost (Sinclair p. 28). You get another glimpse at their lives when he talks about the expense of this feast and how it will end up costing more than most in the room earn in a year (Sinclair p. 31). The reader also gets their first glimpse into Sinclair's mindset concerning American society when he writes about how the young men, whowould be much more respectful back in the old country, are shirking their responsibility to the veselija and partaking of the wedding feast but not donating to help offset the costs
Long hours in unsanitary conditions with short, if any, breaks. However, further study about the time period that the character of Jurgis existed in and reading about the Chicago stockyards, I believe it was entirely possible for one person to suffer through all the events Jurgis suffered through. I saw Jurgis much like the character of Jenny in the movie "Forrest Gump" whom I believe was used to show the bad side of the 1960's and 1970's with the understanding that no one person could possibly suffer all these ignominies. Socialists have a utopian idea of the perfect society and what everyone's place in it will be, however I have never seen it laid out in a way that makes sense. Also, there was a growing discontent about the countless under-educated immigrants that kept pouring into America every year. Each page got farther and farther away from the story Sinclair had developed in the first 28 chapters that by the time I reached the end it didn't feel like the same book. The public did demand reforms after reading his book, but not for the humanitarian reasons Sinclair had hoped for. No thought is given to them as human beings by the corporations they work for. Up to and through chapter 28 I had formed an emotional bond to the character of Jurgis. Sinclair's statement about hitting the public's stomach was driven home by none other than the president at the time, Teddy Roosevelt. This book came out only a few years after the Spanish-American War and the memory of more soldiers dying from tainted canned beef than from enemy bullets was still fresh in the minds of Americans. That the companies butchered and shipped this meat with the regular meat obviously affected people more than the inhuman working and living conditions of Sinclair's characters. The descriptions abound throughout the book about the rancid scraps of meat and meat by-products being mixed together to make sausage, or chemically treated for canned beef and ham (Sinclair p.
Common topics in this essay:
Jurgis Ona,
Forrest Gump,
Sinclair Socialists,
Spanish-American War,
Inspection Act,
Debs Debs,
,
House Representatives,
Jungle Legislation,
Roosevelt Roosevelt,
wedding feast,
character jurgis,
person suffer,
meat inspection act,
inspection act,
demand reforms,
food drug,
pure food,
graphic descriptions,
pure food drug,
sinclair obviously,
chapter 28,
|
Acceptance Essays
