Review of Upton Beall Sinclair's The Jungle

Upton Beall Sinclair, one of America's well known and most influential writers, writes The Jungle, which is a portrayal of appalling conditions immigrants faced when escaping from their home country in search of economic and religious freedom, prosperity, and a "new life." In the book, Rudkus family moves from Lithuania, settling in the Packingtown, a section of Chicago, where the meat packing industry is most central, and where all their hopes and dreams for a splendid future are trampled down with cruel, withering reality.

The main character, Jugris Rudkus, is a personification of all immigrants of the time seeking salvation, but finding suffering instead. In the early chapters, he is a buoyant young man, optimistic, and energetic, and subsequently, one notices his apparent physical and moral distortion. This essay aims to identify some of the values addressed in book, such as: equality, religion, and mission, which are discussed in Sinclair's The Jungle. A profound elaboration helps to envision Sinclair's use of these values. The book has a tremendous impact on the society, causing the public to reconsider the system of the workers and to have more control over it.

Equality

Equality was and still is a pivotal concern in America. Even the name of the book, (The Jungle), speaks for itself. The book is an embodiment of all the working immigrants who are being treated as savages at work. The immigrants, despite all their efforts, were suffering from the realms of the society. The working class is unequal to the rich masters who were exploiting the working class, making them work enormous hours at horrible conditions, with no insurance, and indifferent to all their problems.

Workers had to work with no days off, no matter their physical condition, although the results of that could be fatal. The following excerpt from the book shows a general idea for how the masters treated their workers: "They had got the best out of him-they had worn him out, with their speeding up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away" (126). This is definitely an example of inequality because the rich people did not encounter these horrible conditions, but were dictating them. To eliminate such injustices in the society, Sinclair aims to gain equality for the workers by writing this book.
Identity

The characters in the book have eroded identity. Moreover, the foremen treat them as savages with no real substance of character. Owners abuse their workers, making them work at most merciless conditions, and seeing them as "working tools," rather then human beings. This is an example of how Sinclair depicts workers' identity.

In addition, according to Sinclair, these dreadful living conditions make people selfish; for example, "An unmarried man could save, if he […] was absolutely selfish-that is if he paid no heed to the demands of this old parents, […], and the people who might be starving to death next door" (127). Seemingly, life forcefully ushers them into the atmosphere of selfishness and egoism in relation to people around them.

Up until Jugris discovers the ideals of Socialism, everything goes wrong for him: his wife cheats on him and dies while in labor, he turns into a superfluous man and having lost all his hopes, wanders about with no true purpose in life and no strong identity. However, just as Jugris, a personification of all the workers' exposed to the evil conditions, discovers Socialism, everything begins to revert to its norms, thus automatically making Socialism the foundation of the workers' identity. In other words, if Socialism is adopted then, according to Jugris, there will be no more eroded identities.

Mission

Upton Sinclair was not just an author, he was a firm proponent of public exposure of illicit activity, a form of muckracking where he continuously brought to publics attention that which went beyond norms. Seemingly, the mission of this book was to praise Socialism and to inform the society and the government of the ruthless and immoral injustices performed on the meat packing industries. His goal was to provoke outrage and to elicit public sympathy for the underprivileged workers. The book evokes public outcry of indignation which in less then a year leads to a passage of two laws, one of which is the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Theodore Roosevelt, the President during the time, sends sanitary workers to check the authenticity of the declarations made in the book. As they realize that they are, in fact, authentic, the society panics and the meat demand falls tremendously.

As a result, nowadays, the working conditions have greatly improved. According to Sinclair it is clear that there was no equality during the time, that working immigrants had poisoned identities and were mostly treated as savages, hence the title of the book, The Jungle, and that the purpose of the book was to obliterate these injustices, and to perturb the public with the horrifying truth.

Equality

Equality has always been world's important value. This essay aims to identify equality in American according to the works of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Emma Goldman and Henry Morton Stanley who have touched upon this important value. According to these writers, it seems that there is no equality in America; with a profound examine a further unfolding of this issue is possible.

Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Elizabeth Bacon Custer is writing from a female point of view, identifying mostly with the wives of military men. According to one critic, "the army wives [in her works] are depicted as helpless and giddy, and dependent on the brave and long-suffering men for protection […]" (315). Just from this statement alone one may see that Custer did not equate women to their male counterparts.

Custer's "The Day of Anxiety and Terror" is also a great example of how women are unequal to men. Firstly, the fact that women are constantly referred to as frightened when fighting with Indians, (while men are actually heroically fighting back), shows women's weak nature. Also the fact that one officer has to always stay there with women who literally become a burden for him because they "were […] so anxious and alarmed that he had not the heart to resist [their] appeals to him to remain near" (320). In relation to men, this makes women look primitive and weak. Another excerpt shows that, even according to men, military is not a place for women, "we heard he said […] that should he ever be detailed to command a garrison where agitated women were left, he would protest and beg for active duty, no matter if his life itself were in jeopardy" (320). According to Elizabeth Custer and to all of these examples, women were not equal to men.

Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman, an immigrant, believes that there is no equality, and that women should not strive for equality. Her visualization of this notion is very unique. In "The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation, she claims that, instead of "competing with men," and fighting for equality with them, "women as women should join the struggle for a better world" (389). This is because, according to her men and women, "represent two antagonistic worlds" (395).

She is saying that women are obviously different from men, but there is nothing wrong with it, in fact, she claims that "these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole" (390). According to her, it is important to "feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities" (390). She proclaims that women have to have an identity which is unique. They have to be accepted for who they are and never "compete with men." According to Goldman, "[the change] begins in woman's soul," which means that women firstly have to accept the fact that they are different from men, and that they are important, unique, and can make a difference.

Henry M. Stanley

Henry Morton Stanley, an Anglo-American explorer and journalist, claims that Indians and Blacks are "innately savages," which automatically drives the reader to think accordingly, and to notice that Stanley's work strives to persuade the reader that there is no equality in America, and that Indians and Blacks are not equal to Whites. The following excerpt from Stanley's "My early Adventures in America" shows Stanley's apparent intent to depict Indians and Blacks as primitive and childlike beings, of whom he is somewhat making fun, "It would be no exaggeration state that twenty times more Indians fell by the hands of rifle-armed Indians than by the arms of the whites" (276).

A subsequent excerpt from Stanley's work also depicts Indians and Blacks as primitive and childlike, where the author equates them to little infants and animals in order to emphasize the level of their permittivity, "Savages have the minds of children and the passion of brutes and to place breech-loaders in their hands is as cruel as an act was to put razors in the hands of infants" (277). According to Stanley, it is evident that there is no equality in America, and that Whites are superior to any other race.

One can certainly draw a conclusion that all of these writers believed and shown that there was no equality in America. Even though they have all addressed this idea in their own unique way, the outcome remains: America is not an equal society.