An Analysis Of Sinclair's The Jungle

The Jungle is the story of a man named Jurgis Rudkus and his family, who is forced to face hardship after hardship working in meatpacking plants as they limp towards the “American dream”; a dream that was quickly crushed after their immigration from Lithuania to Chicago. An author who knows hardship all too well wrote the book: Upton Beall Sinclair. Sinclair was born in 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland into an extremely underprivileged and impoverished family who struggled with the impact of the civil war. Sinclair’s family was moved to New York when he was ten years old. His alcoholic father, whom ironically happened to be a liquor salesman, made the decision. There were two positive outcome of Sinclair’s troubling childhood: his intelligence …show more content…
Firstly, Sinclair intended to awaken and educate the reader on the horrendous living conditions being forced upon immigrants. Secondly, since Sinclair was a large supporter of Socialism, he attempted to show the advantages it had to offer when it came to helping the problems of a society, such as the one Sinclair illustrated in Chicago. Sinclair’s opinions are clearly supported within his extremely powerful story. Jurgis Rudkus and his family, which seems to be a fairly average immigrant family of their time period, portray the story. The family is unprivileged and naïve when it comes to schemes intended to take the little that they do possess. The family is constantly being stepped on due to the language barrier: a common and major factor that immigrants stumble upon when it comes to their trust being taken advantage …show more content…
The Progressive Era was a time period in American history. Its duration was from the 1890’s through the 1920’s. It completely took place at the turn of the century, which is when America experienced onset urbanization and industrialization. Once the word industrialization is said, it is made clear the connection the novel and the progressive era share. The Progressive Era reached its climax in the early 1990’s and America had finally had enough of the big factories taking advantage of its workers. One of Sinclair’s intentions in writing this novel was to bring light to the corruption; he succeeded. The Jungle uncovered the mistreatment of meat packing employees. It also showed how even the food was being mishandled. This started uproar in society and worked towards a significant turning point in history. Americans were demanding to reform working conditions and put a halt to all labor abuse. Because of Sinclair, America moved towards safer working