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Jungle By Upton Sinclair Condensed |
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The Jungle Plot Overview Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, a young man and woman who have recently immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their wedding feast at a bar in an area of Chicago known as Packingtown. ... Jurgis, who doesnt elicit much more from the reader than pity, is an obvious instrument that Sinclair uses to express his vision of the exploitation of the worker by capitalism and his redemption by socialism. Jurgis - Throughout The Jungle, Sinclairs characters are not so much well-rounded, believable characters as they are representative figures of the immigrant working class as a whole. ... Ona Lukoszaite - Like Jurgis, Ona is more a type than an individual, and Sinclair constructs her as an appealing feminine contrast to Jurgiss masculinity. ... Ona is extremely young—not even sixteen at the start of the novel—and is presented as a delicate, lovely picture of female traits that Sinclair believed his readers would find laudable: docility, loyalty, and trust in her husband and family. ... But generally, throughout the novel, Ona is mainly portrayed as a girl for Jurgis to love and a wife to complete the family ideal that Sinclair repeatedly exposes to the destructive forces of capitalism. ... A resilient, strong-willed old woman, Teta Elzbieta is one of the strongest and most important characters in The Jungle. Sinclair uses her to represent the redemptive power of family, home, and tradition. ... Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes Socialism as a Remedy for the Evils of Capitalism - The main theme of The Jungle is the evil of capitalism. ... The Jungle is not a thematically nuanced or complicated novel: capitalism is simply portrayed as a total evil, from its greedy destruction of children to its cynical willingness to sell diseased meat to an unsuspecting public. Sinclair opts not to explore the psychology of capitalism; instead, he simply presents a long litany of the ugly effects of capitalism on the world. ... The Immigrant Experience and the Hollowness of the American Dream - Because the family that Sinclair uses to represent the struggle of the working class under capitalism is a group of Lithuanian immigrants, the novel is also able to explore the plight of immigrants in America. ... But Sinclair exposes the hypocrisy of the American Dream as the family members attempt to plug themselves into this naïve equation: virtually every aspect of the familys experience in Packingtown runs counter to the myth of America to which they subscribe. ... Because he wants his readers to sympathize with Jurgis, Sinclair goes to great lengths to ensure that this immigrant family doesnt seem alien or foreign to the American mind. ... Sinclair doesnt attack the American Dream; instead, he uses the disintegration of the family to illustrate his belief that capitalism itself is an attack on the values that support the American Dream, which has long since been rendered hollow by the immoral value of greed. ... Sinclair heightens the atmosphere of grim tragedy and hopelessness to such an extent that only the encounter with socialism in Chapter 28 can possibly alleviate Jurgiss suffering and give his life meaning. ... Sinclair uses the cans of rotten and unhealthy meat to represent the essential corruption of capitalism and the hypocrisy of the American Dream. ... The Jungle - The novels title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism; the world of Packingtown is like a Darwinian jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are engaged in a brutal, amoral fight for survival. ... By relating the story of a group of honest, hardworking immigrants who are destroyed by corruption and evil, Sinclair tries to rebut the idea of Social Darwinism, implying that those who succeed in the capitalist system are not the best of humankind but rather the worst and most corrupt of all. ... " Analysis Sinclair employs a spare, journalistic style that tries to convey an exacting realism, which had a precedent in American fiction in novelists such as Theodore Dreiser, who wrote about the social problems of industrialization, and Stephen Crane, who grimly portrayed the horrors of the Civil War in The Red Badge of Courage. ... Sinclair splatters the page with a surfeit of details that are intended not so much to create atmosphere as to drive home a message. ... Sinclairs occasional use of the second person ("to spend such a sum, all in a single day of your life") heightens the readers sense of experiencing the life that Sinclair describes in full, gritty detail. ... To build a case for socialism, Sinclair had to persuade the American reading public to sympathize with the very people whom many regarded with suspicion and hostility. In the opening chapters, Sinclair endeavors to reduce the alien character of the Lithuanian immigrant family that occupies the center of his narrative by showing them in an extremely sympathetic setting—a wedding feast. ... In this way, though the novel opens with the Lithuanian custom of the veselija, Sinclair emphasizes that the immigrants share a great many social values with the American reading public. ... Just as Sinclair wishes to inspire sympathy for the immigrant family by getting his readers to identify with their social values, so too does he attempt to sway opinion against the unwholesome social values that menace the immigrants. ... Hence, Sinclair identifies capitalism as hostile to American moral values; in this way, the opening chapters of the novel immediately begin to build a case for socialism. ... But Sinclair immediately begins to portray this dream of America as a naïve fantasy: Jokubas is a struggling delicatessen operator, not a thriving capitalist. ... Sinclair means to depict these events as a betrayal of the very values upon which the American identity is based. ... " Again, Sinclair wishes to identify the immigrant laborer with the values of the American reading public. ... Sinclair portrays him as utterly committed to the values of labor and family on which the American Dream is based. ... Sinclair wants the reader to identify with the immigrant laborer through their victimization by the same enemy. ... Sinclair attempts to show that, within capitalist economics, one cannot advance by means of hard work and a strong commitment to good social values. ... Sinclair makes clear that the few labor reform laws aimed at preventing abusive labor practices are largely ineffective. ... Throughout The Jungle, Sinclair uses narrative incidents such as Stanislovass exploitation as evidence to support the argument that working from within capitalism is not effective. ... The world that Sinclair portrays is remarkably Darwinian, as Jurgis and his family are running a losing race for survival. ... By attributing Jurgis with a strong physique and an initially enthusiastic attitude, Sinclair tries to demonstrate the fiction of Social Darwinism. ... Sinclair argues that this system of greed oppresses individuals; here, Marijas coins are a concretized form of money that physically oppresses her. ... Throughout these chapters, Sinclair accuses capitalism of undermining the family. ... Analysis Packingtown is full of predators and, as they have done throughout The Jungle, these hostile forces continue to attack the family bond that unites the immigrants. ... Sinclair compares him to a "wounded bull" and a "tiger," and the image of Jurgis hovering over Connor with his mouth full of Connors blood and skin evokes the primal, bestial quality of his rage. ... With Jurgiss sentencing, Sinclair argues that capitalism has perverted the American justice system. ... Sinclair also charges capitalism with being anti-Christian. ... Sinclair foreshadows this fall throughout the early sections of the novel; his commitment to exemplifying the evils of capitalism necessitates that these exploited immigrants fail in their naïve pursuit of the American Dream. Throughout the novel, Sinclair relentlessly insists that hard work, family values, self-reliance, and self-motivated action—the underpinnings of the American Dream—do absolutely nothing to provide the means for social advancement. The wage laborers that populate The Jungle are moved inevitably toward ruin and abuse by forces beyond their control. ... Analysis The narrative shape of The Jungle is extremely simple: it exposes the fallacy of the American Dream by portraying the gradual destruction of the immigrant family at the hands of the forces of capitalism. ... Historical memory is short if not nonexistent in The Jungle. ... Through this example, Sinclair argues, pessimistically, that individual philanthropists working within the structures of capitalism are likewise ineffective at changing the lives of wage laborers for the better. ... Analysis As Sinclair portrays the destruction of the immigrant family through the brutal machinery of turn-of-the-century capitalism, he continues to focus principally on the development of Jurgiss character. ... Without this crucial anchor, Jurgis gives himself over to complete debauchery—Sinclair again positions capitalism as a threat to fundamental American values. ... The realist style that Sinclair uses to expose appalling working conditions requires consistent adherence throughout the text because deviation from it reveals the text to be contrived. ... Sinclair renders the speech of the drunken Freddie with a consummate, almost exaggerated, realism. ... Sinclair places capitalists and capitalism under a glaring spotlight and reports every ugly detail; however, he spares his protagonist and the working classes realistic treatment that might reflect poorly on them. ... Analysis Jurgiss entrance into the underworld of crime demonstrates that merciless predation, thievery, and dishonesty are far better rewarded in the universe of The Jungle than commitment to fundamental American values. ... Sinclair again ironically positions capitalism, which is generally considered to be the forum of the American Dream, as a threat to the American way. ... Jurgis heads down the road of corruption and dishonesty, and Sinclair uses the encounter with Phil Connor to illustrate that any remaining vestige of morality or desire to achieve the American Dream by honest means is pointless for Jurgis. ... Sinclair, thus, reasserts the worthlessness of moral values in the face of capitalism, as one cannot gain ground by clinging to such idealistic values when corruption abounds. In particular, Sinclair focuses on the moral depredations of capitalism, especially the corrupting influence of vice among the laborers as a means of escaping the miseries of their lives. ... Sinclair equates the moral "dirtiness" of the scab workers with the literal dirtiness of the meat itself. ... Many of the scab workers are black southerners, to whom Sinclair often refers as "big buck Negroes. ... Sinclair states that their ancestors were once African savages forced into slavery; now, however, they are really "free" for the first time—"free to wreck themselves." In his fervent attempt to rouse the reading publics moral outrage against big capitalists, Sinclair reproduces, unfortunately, some of the most racist stereotypes against blacks. ... Analysis Marijas entrance into prostitution culminates the essential accusation that Sinclair levels against capitalism: throughout The Jungle, he charges capitalism with trafficking in human lives. ... Just as the prostitutes are kept in a form of slavery, Sinclair often compares wage laborers to slaves, another form of trafficking in human bodies. ... To this point, the meaning of the title The Jungle has been made painfully clear: the world of the wage laborer is a savage realm characterized by a Darwinian struggle for survival. ... New arrivals enter into this jungle crammed with predators waiting to attack them at every turn. The structures of capitalism are a jungle of hidden nooks and crannies, each containing yet another dirty secret. ... Having gone to such great lengths to illustrate the evils of capitalism, Sinclair now offers socialism as the solution to the problems that the first twenty-seven chapters of the novel have explored in detail. ... The socialist political meeting, however, proves anything but a jungle; rather, it is a haven from the cruel reality of capitalism. ... Analysis Marijas entrance into prostitution culminates the essential accusation that Sinclair levels against capitalism: throughout The Jungle, he charges capitalism with trafficking in human lives. ... Just as the prostitutes are kept in a form of slavery, Sinclair often compares wage laborers to slaves, another form of trafficking in human bodies. ... To this point, the meaning of the title The Jungle has been made painfully clear: the world of the wage laborer is a savage realm characterized by a Darwinian struggle for survival. ... New arrivals enter into this jungle crammed with predators waiting to attack them at every turn. The structures of capitalism are a jungle of hidden nooks and crannies, each containing yet another dirty secret. ... Having gone to such great lengths to illustrate the evils of capitalism, Sinclair now offers socialism as the solution to the problems that the first twenty-seven chapters of the novel have explored in detail. ... The socialist political meeting, however, proves anything but a jungle; rather, it is a haven from the cruel reality of capitalism. ... " Analysis The final chapters of The Jungle largely abandon the narrative, functioning as an explanation and an argument for socialism. ... The ending of The Jungle is, to a great extent, meant to be simplistic. ... Sinclair closes his sharp eye for detail when he examines socialism, and the effect stunts the humanity of the people whom he wants to liberate. ... If Sinclair wants the reader to identify with his socialists, he fails because there is no real human being with whom to identify. Jurgis, a constricted character to begin with, almost disappears, and the new characters are flatter than any that Sinclair has offered so far. ... Throughout The Jungle, Sinclair narrates events as seen through the eyes of Jurgis, though he sometimes employs a more omniscient perspective to describe business dealings and social problems that Jurgis doesnt witness. In an attempt to weave these passages into the narrative fabric, Sinclair has Jurgis learn of them at some unspecified future point in time. ... Sinclair recounts that "after Jurgis had made himself more familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very quickly, he would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all sorts of aspects …"; a lengthy polemic against the Beef Trust then follows, as if it comprises the knowledge that Sinclair claims that Jurgis gains. The meetings that Jurgis attends provide another forum for Sinclair to air his politics, as does the literature that Jurgis reads. ... Sinclair wants to make his argument in as blunt a language as possible, but the work of fiction has its own laws of internal consistency. The journalistic style that Sinclair employs requires realism. ... The framing devices show that Sinclair feels these demands. ... Thus, Jurgis learns about the Beef Trust at some future, unspecified point, and Sinclair is free to rail against it. ... Key Facts Full title - The Jungle Author - Upton Sinclair Type of work - Novel Genre - Social criticism, political fiction, muckraking fiction Language - English Time and place written - Chicago and Princeton, New Jersey, 1905–1906 Date of first publication - 1906 Publisher - Sinclair published the novel at his own expense after several publishing firms rejected it. ... Falling action - Jurgiss abandonment of his family and turn to dishonest means to survive; Marijas turn to prostitution Themes - Socialism as a remedy for the evils of capitalism; the immigrant experience and the hollowness of the American Dream Motifs - Corruption; family and tradition Symbols - Packingtown and the stockyards symbolize the exploitation of workers; the idea of the jungle symbolizes the capitalist idea of the survival of the fittest; cans of rotten meat symbolize the disingenuous face of capitalism; Teta Elzbieta symbolizes the family, while Jonas symbolizes capitalisms destruction of the family Foreshadowing - The grim setting of Packingtown foreshadows the familys eventual destruction; the conversation with Grandmother Majauszkiene about the housing swindle foreshadows their eviction; Jurgiss experiences with vote-buying and crime early in the novel foreshadow his later participation in similar schemes The Jungle by Upton Sinclair paints a dreary life for the immigrants from Lithuania in Chicago’s Packingtown area. The Jungle is a Socialist book that is supposed to make people see the follies of capitalism through the life of the main character, Jurgis. ... The Jungle horribly failed its purpose. ... Upton Sinclair summed this up by saying: "I aimed at the publics heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. ... I enjoyed how realistic Sinclair was in creating the character of Jurgis. ... Sinclair took the mentality of these writers and used it against them. ... Sinclair makes it so that the American capitalist dream turns against Jurgis from the beginning when it leaves him in debt to the bar for his wedding. ... Instead of sugarcoating everything Sinclair showed that life for immigrants was not an easy one. ... Sinclair starts to attack anything that is not socialist in the final chapter. ... The reader is built up to believe that capitalism is a terrible thing from the beginning of the book, and at the very end Sinclair only devotes four chapters to Jurgis’s transformation, and only spends the last chapter to show how great his life has become through capitalism. ... Even when Jurgis is being offered a job Sinclair makes sure to show every action that the speaker is doing as they are spoken. ... Upton Sinclair’s writing style also has an extremely pessimistic view to it. Even at the end when Jurgis’s life is supposed to be taking a turn for the good, Sinclair manages to remind the reader of all the strife that Jurgis went through to get a job as a porter at a hotel. Upton Sinclair used primary resources in writing The Jungle. Sinclair went to Chicago and spent quite a bit of time the citys meatpacking plants and learnt just about every detail about the work, the worker’s home lives and the business structure. From his first hand research he wrote The Jungle. I believe that Upton Sinclair did draw sensible conclusions from his research in the plants. ... The Jungle was as reasonably helpful in the course. |
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Title: Jungle By Upton Sinclair Condensed
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