The Jungle, Book Review Example

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Charleston: Forgotten Books, 1935.

Upton Sinclair was a son of the ruined Southern aristocrats who moved to New York when he was 10. The family had to work hard to earn for a living, and Upton himself, even despite successful writing attempts from as early as 14, was forced to work at the meatpacking plant in the yards, where he became the witness of multiple violations of labor legislation and safe handing of food. The result was the plot of The Jungle where the author unveiled the terrible conditions in which the workers were forced to work, and revealed the corruption existing in the Meat Trust leading to neglect of safety regulations and improper handing of meat products. The work was first ignored by publishers, but the writer insisted that he would still publish the work himself, after which he really received a great number of orders. The work had a series of significant legislative changes, including the adoption of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act initiated by the President Theodore Roosevelt. Thus, the overall effect of the book involved both social and legal consequences that altered the public understanding of meatpacking work and the true safety of food they bought (Sinclair).

The book tells about the Lithuanian family, immigrants to the USA, with Jurgis Rudkus as a head thereof and the main character of the novel. The family moves to the USA in the pursuit of better life, but they find out that they have to work in inhumane conditions at the meatpacking plant where they see how exhausted and neglected the workers are, how unsafe the work is and how horrible the quality of produced products turns out. All members of the family have to work, including Jurgis’ pregnant wife and weak old father, but they are still urged to exist in dangerous, intoxicated surroundings, in homes full of rats and poisonous chemicals (Sinclair). Jurgis is driven to despair as soon as his wife and small son die, so he leaves the plant and goes to the countryside where he loses the last ties with a decent life. Returning to Chicago, he gets involved in criminal activities with his new friend from a jail, and degrades. The savior is his introduction to the principles of Socialism; Jurgis enters a Socialist party and learns the roots of inequality, finds a decent job and tries to help the family he abandoned (Sinclair). The ending part of the book serves a Socialist propaganda with the speech about the forthcoming force of the Socialist party and its future coming to the rule in the city (Sinclair).

There are several main messages and themes in the book; the first call of Sinclair refers to the inhumane working conditions of that time, and the corruption existing in the meatpacking industry, as well as in other areas such as the police force, the politics etc. The author offers dreadful descriptions of where the workers had to live to make the reader understand how unacceptable the conditions were:

“There were mountains and valleys and rivers, gullies and ditches, and great hollows full of stinking green water. In these pools the children played, and rolled about in the mud of the streets…Swarms and flies…hung about the scene, literally blackening the air” (Siclair 26).

The book is also full of depictions of corruption that surrounded meat production; Sinclair focused on numerous malpractices of officials, making the audience realize how dangerous their activities could be for the consumer health: it is enough to recollect the fragment about processing pregnant cows that were officially considered inappropriate for food or the words about the attitude to materials from which the products were made: “They use everything about the hog except the squeal” (Sinclair 31).

Speaking about the general effect of the book and its value to readers, one should note that Sinclair provides a true picture of the production at the beginning of the 20^th century. Malpractices, labor exploitation, inhumane conditions for existence – all this was a part of the daily reality for workers at the rise of the Industrial Revolution. People had to agree to the miserable payment and live in insanitary conditions just to be able to provide for their living; hence, the rise of the Socialist movement finds a precise reflection in the work of Sinclair. The work will be of invaluable interest and help for any person studying the history of the working class in 1900s and the formation of the labor movement that marked the next few decades.

Works Cited

Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Charleston: Forgotten Books, 1935.