Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle": An Overview

Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle is perhaps the quintessential example of the turn of the 20th century "muckraking" tradition. The story is about the corruption and gross disregard of safety, cleanliness and fairness within the American meatpacking industry in the early 20th century. Sinclair's aim in writing this novel was to expose the harsh living conditions of the meat factory workers in Chicago. His goal was to show the "haves" of the early 20th century a glimpse of the poverty and hopelessness that was prevalent about the "have-nots" in hopes that such a glimpse would inspire social programs to help the lower class factory workers. However, the novel has a decidedly different effect on the public. Sinclair remarks: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." This referring to the fact that rather than inspire social reforms to protect the workers, his ghastly depiction of meat processing factories in which "workers would fall into the rendering tanks and be ground, along with animal parts, into 'Durham's Pure Beef Lard'" inspired reforms to protect the consumer.

However, while the novel perhaps failed in accomplishing Sinclair's goals it is invaluable at providing a good, if somewhat (although not much) exaggerated, glimpse what an early 20th century American city (specifically Chicago) would have been like through the eyes of a meat factory worker. In fact, the opening scene of the novel, the wedding of Jurgis and Ona, is based upon an actual Lithuanian wedding that Sinclair attended while visiting Chicago. The novel then painfully traces the lives of the members of the Rudkus family as they traverse through "the dirty sewage infested" streets of Chicago. The novel paints the reality of city life during the time period in which immigrants from around the world (most heavily from Europe) would arrive in America with high hopes and high ideals about American cities, only to learn that survival in the capitalist American city is not easy. Thus, as the novel progresses the city transforms form a lovely vestige of hope into a dark dismal dungeon of hopelessness and moral decay.

The novel seemingly accurately describes life within the city at the turn of the century; it is complete with railroads, stockyards, bribery, blacklisting, prostitution, poor sanitation, grisly working conditions, crooks, con men political hacks and so on. As already mentioned, the conditions within the meat packing factories are perhaps the most graphic: men falling into rendering tanks, hands and fingers being chopped off on chopping blocks, women and children losing limbs in the meat grinders, rats everywhere, raw sewage on the floors, et cetera. Yet, Charles P. Neil and James B. Reynolds, federal inspectors sent by Roosevelt in response to the publication of the novel to inspect Chicago's meat factories reported that the conditions were indeed "revolting" and that the only claim Sinclair had made which was unsubstantiated was that of the workers falling into the rendering vats.

Thus, the novel, while certainly fictitious in its characters and plot, is very real in its setting and atmosphere. It seems to largely be accurate in its portrayal of the political and socioeconomic atmosphere, physical characteristics and overall rendition of a turn of the 20th century American city - as viewed by a working class poor immigrant.