Poverty In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Poverty:

Arguably, the main struggle of the family in Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle, is that of money. In fact, if the family was well off financially, almost none of their problems would be of existence, and the story wouldn't be nearly as controversial. Take the beginning of the novel for example when the family foreshadowed all the misery they would face due to monetary issues, “Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain.” (Sinclair 25). The family was already off to a bad start, but they had no idea what horrors America actually had in store for them. The troubles …show more content…
Whether it be the treatment of the workers, or the production of the food, there is no doubt that the workplace setting of the early 20th century was horrid, and unjust. Workers such as Jurgis toiled away for hours earning minimum wages all the while sacrificing his health both mentally and physically. Additionally, these jobs were scarce, thus forming labor unions was rarely effective, and the system of industrial slavery became nearly impossible to escape. On page 120 Sinclair describes, “Working in an unheated slaughterhouse, Jurgis risks his life every day by simply going to work.” Correspondingly, Jurgis acquired many injuries from his job, and his father Dede Antanas died from working in the industry. Death and pain however, were common in the workplace, as bosses valued the worker’s lives just as little as they did the cattle. Therefore, the American laborers, particularly the family mentioned in The Jungle, would live a life no better than that of a cattle, and they would work their lives away trying to fill the pockets of their greedy