The Jungle
In Upton Sinclair's Jungle, the author attempts to make known the evils of the industries and capitalist businesses in Chicago in the early 1900's. The main character Jurgis was part of a lower class immigrant family from Lithuania that came to the US for a new start on life. They explain their illusion of the many chances that the country gives and decide to try and do as well as their friend Jokubas Szedvilas had done. However, as Jurgis starts work; as well as the rest of the family including Antanas, Ona, and Marija; they discover that the "land of the free" is not as forgiving as the naif had expected. Sinclair shows Jurgis's disillusionment and counters them with problems of the Chicago meat-packing industry such as the poor working conditions, gross employee exploitation, job insecurities, and most abundantly the drive of capitalism. As Szedvilas is giving the Rudkuses a tour of Durham's meat-packing plant, he tells them that behind the closed doors are secret rooms and such that the company executives do not want the public to see. Sinclair is hinting with this statement that later in the novel the family will experience crude working conditions that prove to defeat the new lifestyle the Rudkuses envisioned. Howe
Finding a steady job in the early 1900's was rare for an immigrant worker. Jurgis realizes this when he says, "There never seemed! to be an end to the things we have to buy; insurance on the house, taxes, water fees. He calls her a "wild beast" that creates the picture of an animal in a cage. Sinclair's Jungle is a real-life depiction of early twentieth century working conditions for an immigrant. He is confined to bed for several weeks and forces other members of the family to work harder, such as when Marija is driven to work at the brothel, and to draw money from their savings for the house and water. She sits in a damp cellar amid "a sickening odor of moist flesh, twisting sausages into links. The presence of rats and other rodents makes work unhealthy for the workers and for the consumers. Immigrants expecting to support a family had no place in society in the early decades of the twentieth century as is explained by Jurgis's cellmate Jack Duane. Finally, capitalists drive off of corruption. However, without regard to his heroism, he is forced to take off 8 days of work without pay. These kind of sales were the popular way to go in the capitalist era. A worker accepted sexual abuse in order to keep her job. Jurgis's greatest difficulty throughout the novel was to keep a job for more than a month. Upon Jurgis's arrival, Sinclair notes that the immigrants coming to Packingtown are like the hogs walking "by the power of their own legs" to their death on the chutes. Dede Antanas, Jurgis's father, experiences the same conditions.
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Acceptance Essays
