Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, covers numerous subjects centered on life in Chicago, focusing on the corruption and collusion rampant during those years between industries such as the meatpackers, the politicians, and criminal underground. It describes the squalid and hopeless living conditions of working-class families, especially the immigrants, the fights and failures of unions, and presents an alternative and negative view of capitalism as well as arguments for socialism. The book became a best seller but not for the reasons Sinclair hoped, its socialist message overshadowed by the graphic and sickening descriptions of working conditions in the meat ...