The Jungle Story
Upton Sinclair?s novel the Jungle illustrates how greed and ruthless competition has made turn of the century America into a brutal jungle. ?Take or be taken? was the guiding rule, and everyone was someone else?s prey. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder - wage earners and their families were at a particular disadvantage in the capitalist jungle.Workers were slaves to the whims of their masters, the capitalist who own and ran private industry. Many of the workers were immigrants ignorant of the language and ways of their new country were the most vulnerable members of this class.immigrants.gates of the packing houses were There has been a representative of several nationalities in this class First were the Germans, next the Irish, then the Poles. Next the Lithuanians, and the Slovaks. They all came to Packingtown, Chicago to share in the American dream of freedom and prosperity, but all they found were exploitation. The Packingtown Beef trust was part of the capitalist jungle. It was made up of a number of large meat packing firms like Nelson Morris and Company, Armour and Company, Swift and Company , Brown, and Durham. Every week the managers of the trust got together and compared notes, and there was one scale for all
Jurgis is sent to jail, and when he is free again he finds that his home ha been repossessed. When he finally does find Ona, she dies of a miscarriage. Jurgis still struggles to survive, for the sake of Antanas, but one day when he comes home form work he finds that Antanas has drowned in a pool of water. He realizes that he has been ?the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his vitals and devoured him? (p. 177) His life has been destroyed. The book became famous and made Sinclair a good deal of money, but the socialist ideals that the author intended as the cure for the ills of capitalism were not recognized by most readers, who were more worried about unhealthy meat. Love?s Pilgrimage (1911) attempted to move away from the more political-social style, but in 1913 Sinclair began to investigate the great Colorado coal strike and the methods used by the Rockefeller to suppress it; as a result of the publicity he brought to the owners? brutality, the strike was settled, and a book resulted King Coal, (1917). By this time, he had moved to California, where he began a lifelong career of political activism and journalism devoted to exposing the evils of greed and materialism: Research Findings Related To Primary Source Upton Sinclair, the most famous of the American ?muckraker? journalists and novelists, was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878. Although his family was poor, Sinclair was able to earn money as a writer from a very early age, and with his savings he was able to attend college. He attended City College of New York from 1895 to 1897, and in 1897 he graduated with an A.B. degree. Following graduation, Sinclair went on to graduate study at Columbia University, where he began writing full-length novels with serious social themes. These novels such as King Midas, The Journal of Arthur Stirling, and Manassas, did not receive any critical recognition, but they showed that Sinclair was concerned with the condition of working people and the inequality of the rich and poor in his first works. Sinclair?s early years in Baltimore had his college and university experiences in New York City provided a background for the development of his social consciousness and his rejection of capitalism.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Jurgis Ona, Brown Durham, Upton Sinclair, Inspection Act, Packingtown Chicago, Chicago Illiterate, Industry Politics, Primary Source, Winston Churchill, Hinds Soon, meat inspection, packing plants, upton sinclair, pure food, capitalistic jungle, jurgis ona, meat packing, meat food products, company swift, swift company, corrupt political machine, impact jungle, company armour company, armour company swift, morris company armour,
Approximate Word count = 4457
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)
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