Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is a fictional story illustrating the lives of immigrants in the United States. It depicts the struggle between the rich and the poor which was ever growing in the industrial town of Chicago. It showed the plight of immigrant workers that were desperately trying to achieve the American dream which they had heard before leaving their native countries. “The Jungle” acts as a social political documentary of the American industrial growth by offering a peak Chicago meatpacking industry that was linked to corruption and dishonest practices in the early 20th century.
The key character of this book is Jurgis Rudkus a man of Lithuanian descent, an immigrant trying to make ends meet in the United States. He works knowing hard knowing that his friends and family depend on him. Jurgis Rudkus is used to portray the harsh lifestyle immigrants succumbed in America. The character is used to espouse capitalism as an unfit system that does not incorporate a human face to it. This is because it generates corruption and exploitation of the poor. It is due capitalism’s corruption that many moderate socialists in the 1900’s were disturbed by the behavior and power of the corporate America.
The principal underlying themes of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” can be fully comprehended and fairly gauged after one getting acquainted with the plot of the work. The book provides a depiction of the socioeconomic discord and political wickedness that introduced America into the 20th century. While narrating the account of the Lithuanian immigrant workers in Chicago, Upton illustrates how materialism and ruthless competition were catalysts of the vulturine capitalist American “jungle” at the turn of the 19th century. This radical work by Upton Sinclair was a sound platform for politics that was pro-socialist.
Many immigrants that came to America like Jurgis Rudkus had aspirations of success and prosperity. They believed the new world offer green pastures that would offer nothing but happiness. The advertisements that had surfaced in Europe presented bright times ahead and economic stability this trusting and hopeful people. Job opportunities with superb wages and working conditions, safety and other advantages seemed like an unbelievable dream to these unsuspecting foreigners. Little did they know that they would face a totally altered state of affairs in America. The enormous immigration led to a shortage of jobs.
The few immigrants that were luckily employed, wound up in steel mills, factories or the meat packing industry. Rudkus was one of the disillusioned immigrants, experiencing the horrific conditions which laborers faced. They worked for nominal wages, fixed long hours, in an environment where worker safety had no place. Early on, the immigrants had no one to turn to hence many suffered in silence immensely. Rudkus would later on learn of worker unions and other groups that supported the work-force. The formative years of this Americanized life were characterized with sliced fingers, unemployment and depressing “new start”.
Upton Sinclair portrayed Jurgis Rudkus as a donkey that the insatiable capitalists needed in order to reap financial gains. “Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was sort of man the bosses liked to get hold ofIf he were working in a line of men , the line always moved too slowly for him, and you could pick him out by his patience and restlessness”(Sinclair, 22). This showed how committed and gullible Rudkus was to exploitation by his capitalistic employers. The dramatic style Sinclair employs shows the severity of the hardships that Jurgis and his fellow laborers had to endure. The portrayal of socialism in regards to the worker is very attractive to a jobless, famished, indigent man. The fairness of socialism depicted in the book was not fully flawless. This is pegged on the fact that it somehow attempted to marginalize the working class. In reading Sinclair words, Marxism communism was embedded in the principles displayed by socialism. The masses were under control of small rich elite.
The book further describes the sociopolitical nature of America and the unethical antics of the corporate greed. It is a tale of the struggle between the human spirit and the need of people to reach their own destiny. At the start of the 2oth century, America was beginning to feel the effects of an economic downfall. Poor working conditions and sheer poverty were the norm. Corporates were making the government rich at the expense of innocent Americans and workers. This was through unsafe and poor sanitary conditions at the meat packaging industry (Deinzer, 22).
The Americans were granted all the freedoms to achieve the American dream in the 19th century. The problems that hindered this were lack of prosperity and governmental support. The government did little to avert poverty. This is portrayed by how laborers flocked slaughterhouses susceptible harm as the pigs themselves (Wiener, 56). They were used for the core reason of making profits with no care of their suffering. The people were turned to robots that knew nothing past the operations at the meat packaging industry. This made many fear quitting their jobs. In his work, Upton Sinclair made the workers heard despite the towering evils of capitalism.
Work Cited
Deinzer, Eva. The representation of immigrant life in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle. München: GRIN Verlag, 2009.
Sinclair, Upton. The jungle. United States: Filiquarian Pub, 2008.
Wiener, Gary. Workers' rights in Upton Sinclair's The jungle. Detroit: Greenhaven Press/Gale, 2008.
