Immigrants In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

The novel The Jungle was written in 1906 by an American journalist and novelist, Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote The Jungle to represent the harsh conditions and difficult lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago Illinois and other industrialized cities. The novel is set in the early 1900’s when industrialization had reached the United States. It was also a time immigrant population started soaring. The reason behind this was that many foreigners believed that America was the land of opportunity, the land of the free. But unfortunately they came to realize that the opportunities were meant more for the rich. In The Jungle, the immigrant’s experiences and choices acted to shape with class, racism and sexism in various ways and cases.
First, class acted to shape the experiences and choices of immigrants by being unemployed. “Still they …show more content…
The working conditions of the poor were terrible. As mentioned, the lower class had oppressed jobs and severe poverty. Many died in the workplace because of the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions. Jurgis and his family suffered injuries and death. They also suffered from racism. They were taken advantage of. Sexism didn’t help them much either. Women such as Marija, and Ona were paid less than men. Ona was taken advantage of at work by her boss. She had been raped. She ws forced to work at a brothel at night because Conner, Ona’s boss threatened her and her family. “Then he threatened me. He knew all about us, he knew we would starve...” “he would hound us to death” Sinclair explains this condition very well and clearly in the novel. Women were taken advantage of. “But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was particular about things of this sort…” “Here was a population, low class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as