Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, is a unique form of journalism that incorporates a creative plot of fiction in order to expose the hidden evils in America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The Jungle was written in response to a strike in the stockyards of Chicago that was unsuccessful, and Sinclair’s goal in having it published was to expose the unfair treatment of immigrant laborers, however his intent was forgotten as people focused more on the unspeakable conditions of meat preparation (Pickavance). A 1906 review of the novel, published in Time, advised people that wished to read what Sinclair wrote about the preparation of food that “Only a serious purpose or an unusually degraded taste can make the study of such things endurable.”(Barnes and Noble 406) The following quote from the novel shows the cruelty of the process, however there are still more things about the conditions of meat preparation that are equally as appalling.
They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel…one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and life-blood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly, and they were so very human in their protests- and so perfectly within their rights!(Sinclair 39)
In addition to its cruelty to animals, the facility used harmful chemicals, such as formaldehyde in their food products (Sinclair 86). Meat was treated with antibiotics to prevent disease; however the diseases were becoming immune to the medicines, keeping the meat infected. According to an article in Time magazine, this is still happening to our food today. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, less than 1% of American farms are organic. This makes healthy and sustainable eating very expensive and hard to find (Walsh).
The title of the novel compares the fight to live in an impoverished city to the fight to survive in the jungle. A parallel between the system in the jungle of survival of the fittest and the system in which workers were hired and fired in the city, and what their impossible working conditions to do them is quickly noticed when reading the novel. The Jungle illustrates the adventures of a young Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis, and his small and feeble wife, Ona. The newlyweds, and some of their extended family, buy a house after Jurgis lands a job at a slaughterhouse. After the family has been living in the house for a while, however, they realize that Jurgis’s income will not be enough, and almost everyone in the house, including some of the children, is eventually forced to work.
The contract that the family had signed in order to buy their house was a trick, because they were not buying the house at all. They were in fact renting it, and they were not informed of all of the expenses that they would be expected to meet. They were lied to by the realtor, and the lawyer who approved the contract. At work, they were treated unfairly, working too many hours for not enough pay. Conditions at the workplace were unsanitary, as the workers were forced to wash their hands in the same facility that freshly slaughtered meat was rinsed. In the winter, the unheated cement floor would leave the workers freezing and sick. Ona’s boss forced her to have an ongoing affair with him in order to keep her job.
Ona hid the affair from Jurgis until it was impossible to do so. Jurgis then attacked Ona’s boss and got sent to jail. While Jurgis was in jail, Ona lost her job, along with everyone else in their household. When Jurgis finally got released from prison and found his family, who had been evicted from the house that they thought they owned, Ona was a day away from givng birth to a dead baby and finding her own death. Jurgis left on foot to be a wandering homeless man.
The nomadic lifestyle was exciting to Jurgis at first, like a new beginning. However, after a while, sleeping on benches and begging for food got old. He returned to the stockyards in Chicago, found his old family, and became a socialist. After he got involved with socialism, he joined a better union and was treated fairly at work.
A 1906 review of The Jungle, published in The Bookman, suggests that Upton Sinclair used the novel as literary socialist propaganda. This is believable, because almost the entire second half of the book is an argument as to how socialism could fix all of the issues presented in the first half of the book.(Spiegel 407) While reading the first half of The Jungle, I believed every horror that Sinclair wrote and desperately grasped on to his ideas.
When I came to the second half of the book, which deals with the principles of socialism, I lost interest. It was no longer a noble exposure of the country’s evil, but it was a commercial trying to sell socialism to me. When I came to this conclusion, it made me doubt the validity of Sinclair’s statements. A 1907 review of the novel states that “To judge The Jungle fairly, it should be analyzed, first, as the work of an enthusiast absorbed in a special issue; next, as a novel…”(Spiegel 411) After researching enough to find that his accusations were true, I definitely started to question the food that I eat, even though I am a vegetarian. Because of Sinclair’s novel, I have made the decision to one day learn how to grow my own organic vegetables.
During the days I spent reading The Jungle, I was a little bit afraid to eat the food in my house, because of the unspeakable way in which Sinclair describes its preparation. Before The Jungle was published, five different publishers rejected it. Certainly it was not because Upton Sinclair lacked story-telling skills, but Maura Spiegel poses the question, “What might be the origins of the resistance to publish the book?”(412) The resistance probably came from anxiety about the effects of the harsh content of the novel. Publishers probably feared that the public would read this and protest and riot, or be terribly cynical towards our established society and economic system.
Ignoring the controversial content, I found Sinclair’s writing to be very lucid. I could see Jurgis’s rage as he beat upon Ona’s boss relentlessly. I could see the look in his eye and the sweat drops on his forehead as he did it, not realizing the consequences that were sure to follow. I felt Ona’s fear and sorrow as she hid a painful secret from Jurgis and watched her nightmare unfold before her eyes. I enjoyed reading the novel and I appreciated the writing style and story-telling skills of Upton Sinclair, just as much as I admire them. I would have appreciated his muckraking story a considerable amount more, however, had it not tried so hard to convince me that socialism is the antibiotic to an epidemic of poverty.
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. was born on September 20th, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents, Upton and Priscilla, were popular but somewhat poverty stricken, as their lifestyle was restricted by their income(Spiegel). At a young age he began thinking about social and economic systems when he noticed how his parents’ lifestyle differed from the lifestyle of his wealthy grandparents. His thinking shifted then, to subjects that were too mature to be of his concern (Spiegel). His parents took him out of school when he was young because a doctor said that his mind was “outgrowing his body.” (Spiegel)
When he returned to school at ten years old, he completed eight grade levels within two years (Spiegel). He passed the entrance exam for The College of the City of New York when he was thirteen years old (Spiegel). While in school, he sold his writings in order to pay for his five years at The College of the City of New York, and graduate studies at Columbia University (Spiegel). In 1900, he married Meta Fuller, and the couple had a son named David a year later, however they divorced in 1912. Sinclair married twice more after his divorce with Fuller (Spiegel).
The early 1900’s was when Sinclair became a socialist thinker. At this time, he contacted the editor of the most popular socialist journal of that time, Appeal to Reason, and met many people who aided in his development from a writer with some good ideas to a social progressive(Spiegel). Since then, Sinclair was a prominent character among Socialist groups across America. In 1905 he was a cofounder with Jack London, Florence Kelley, and Clarence Darrow of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and in 1906, he started the Helicon Home Colony, which was a socialist community, in Englewood, New Jersey (Spiegel). The Jungle was published in 1906, and its many controversies shook the United States for the first time. The novel inspired President Theodore Roosevelt to arrange investigations that exposed the conditions of the stockyards. The results of these investigations supported the passage of the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle, however, is only one of over 90 books that Sinclair has written, most of which aim to expose the destructive nature of capitalist economic pressure (Columbia). He fit in perfectly however, with the “trend towards realism towards the end of the 19th century.”(Connery)
In 1934, Sinclair unsuccessfully campaigned for California Governor and used his End Poverty in California plan as a campaign tool (Mitchell). He died on November 25, 1968, while staying in a Nursing Home in New Jersey (Spiegel).
This powerful novel of exposure and tool of propaganda serves as a multi-issue awakening from the blindness of consumerism, nationalism, and capitalism- whether its true purpose was to turn the country into a socialist nation or not.
Works Cited
Connery, Thomas. “Fiction/Nonfiction and Sinclair’s The Jungle.” Journalism History 34.3 (2008): 167-170. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 28 Mar. 2011.
Pickavance, Jason. “GASTRONOMIC REALISM: UPTON SINCLAIR’S THE JUNGLE, THE FIGHT FOR PURE FOOD, AND THE MAGIC OF MASTICATION.” Food & Foodways: History & Culture of Human Nourishment 11.2/3 (2003): 87-112. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. 1906. New York: Fine Creative Media, 2003. Print.
Spiegel, Maura. Introduction and Notes. The Jungle. By Upton Sinclair. 1906. Barnes & Noble Classics. New York: Fine Creative Media Inc., 2003. Print.
“Upton Sinclair.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2010): 1. Biography Collection Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Mar. 2011.
Walsh, Bryan, and Rebecca Kaplan. “America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix It. (Cover story).” Time 174.8 (2009): 30-37. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
