America is known as the land of opportunity. In the past as well as the present, immigrants have traveled to this country with dreams of fulfilling their own goals – home ownership, raising a family, or having a good career, for example. This view of America, however, may be more fiction than fact. In The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, views are established of an America completely opposite of the views of the incoming foreigners and even the citizens already living in the country. Upton Sinclair describes the capitalism of America being evil, an obstacle of advancement for the common American. Likewise, he promotes socialism as being good, the solution to the corruption of capitalism. The United States is a country founded on the belief
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This industrial age was the period of time in which Americans brought about new methods of product production, using new inventions and innovations of the time. Business owners took advantage of every opportunity to increase their wealth. This can be considered corruption in businesses as it often involved dishonest practices such as bribing the government to avoid business laws, as well as, more importantly, taking advantage of the large working class. During this time, there was a group of people known as “muckrakers” who attempted to expose this corruption in the big industrial businesses through literary works. One of the best known muckrakers was the author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair used his novel The Jungle to expose the corruption and unsanitary conditions of the meat-packing industry. He gave honest and sometimes gruesomely vivid descriptions of all of the working conditions that would concern any social reformers of the time (McChesney). However, the description of Chicago 's Packingtown only took up part of Sinclair 's book. Most of his writing focused on the difficulty of an immigrant achieving his “American …show more content…
What his purpose was, in reality, was to change the opinion of the public by causing them to sympathize with his fictional immigrant family. In the beginning of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair identified his audience: "To the workingmen of America." (Sinclair 5). Sinclair was not writing to educated scholars who would try refute his novel (although there were certainly those who did); he was writing to the general working class who would agree with his motives against the unjustness and corruption of the so called “captains of industry”
This industrial age was the period of time in which Americans brought about new methods of product production, using new inventions and innovations of the time. Business owners took advantage of every opportunity to increase their wealth. This can be considered corruption in businesses as it often involved dishonest practices such as bribing the government to avoid business laws, as well as, more importantly, taking advantage of the large working class. During this time, there was a group of people known as “muckrakers” who attempted to expose this corruption in the big industrial businesses through literary works. One of the best known muckrakers was the author Upton Sinclair. Sinclair used his novel The Jungle to expose the corruption and unsanitary conditions of the meat-packing industry. He gave honest and sometimes gruesomely vivid descriptions of all of the working conditions that would concern any social reformers of the time (McChesney). However, the description of Chicago 's Packingtown only took up part of Sinclair 's book. Most of his writing focused on the difficulty of an immigrant achieving his “American …show more content…
What his purpose was, in reality, was to change the opinion of the public by causing them to sympathize with his fictional immigrant family. In the beginning of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair identified his audience: "To the workingmen of America." (Sinclair 5). Sinclair was not writing to educated scholars who would try refute his novel (although there were certainly those who did); he was writing to the general working class who would agree with his motives against the unjustness and corruption of the so called “captains of industry”