the jungle

A detailed Summary of the jungle


The Jungle is 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 sometimes-unfortunate workers who fell into the machinery for grinding meat and producing lard. Within months of The Jungle's publication, the sale of meat products dropped dramatically. The public outcry of indignation 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. The details regarding the unsanitary and disgusting conditions in meat packing factorie


Jurgis suffers misfortune after misfortune. He joins the union only to see the union fail to improve working conditions. His wife and child die in rapid succession. He becomes a wandering tramp, the victim of the casual cruelty of those better off than he. Finally, he joins the Chicago criminal underworld where money comes easily to him for the first time since his arrival in America. However, that fails to save him as well. He returns to the remnants of his family only to discover that Marija has become a prostitute. Marija's entrance into prostitution culminates in the essential accusation that Sinclair levels at capitalism. Throughout the Jungle charges capitalism with trafficking in human lives. Human beings are regarded as useful resources, and they are used until they are worn out and then they are thrown away. The prostitute is the concrete embodiment of the sale of human bodies. Moreover, Sinclair often compares wage laborers to slaves, another form of trafficking in human bodies.

s are background details of a much larger picture. Sinclair wrote his novel to provoke outrage over the miserable working conditions of industrial wage labor. He

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Approximate Word count = 780
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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