The Jungle by Upton Sinclair one of the most famous American novels ever written. Most people associate The Jungle with the federal legislation it provoked. Americans were horrified to learn about the terrible sanitation under which their meat products were packed. They were even more horrified to learn that the labels listing the ingredients in tinned meat products were full of lies. The revelation that rotten and diseased meat was sold without a single consideration for public health infuriated American citizens. They consumed meat containing the ground remains of poisoned rats and unfortunate workers who fell into the machinery. Within months of The Jungle's publication, the sale of meat products dropped dramatically. The public outcry of fury led to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, less than a year after the novel's publication.
However, contrary to what many people believe, Sinclair did not write The Jungle to incite the American government into regulating the sanitation of the meat packing industry. Sinclair wrote his novel to provoke outrage over the miserable working conditions of industrial w
Sinclair does make use of one literary movement in the service of promoting his political philosophy. Following in the tradition of Dreiser's Sister Carrie, he writes in the Naturalist style. Sinclair's characters inevitably slide towards their destinies, regardless of their inner character or their efforts to do otherwise. They do not exercise any control over the direction their lives take. Pre-existing social, political, and economic forces beyond their control shape the inevitable course of their lives. This is the primary element to The Jungle until Jurgis joins the Socialist party. Therefore, The Jungle does make use of literary conventions in order to promote Socialism as a viable political goal. It is through the devotion to Socialism that the disenfranchised working poor can regain control of the political, economic, and social machines that currently drive them to their ruin and their deaths.
In the novel, Sinclair writes about Jurgis's Lithuanian immigrant family who moves into the disgusting tenements and meat packing factories of Chicago. There, they suffer the loss of all hopes of success and f
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