Book Description: Documenting the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the century, this centennial edition of The Jungle brings into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream.
Life in the Laissez-Faire Jungle Everyone has heard of this 1906 book, but few have read it all. It was not a muck-raking investigation into the meat processing industry, but a novel about an immigrant family that came to a big city (Chicago) and suffered from all possible problems (like a worst case scenario). Poverty, drugs, crime, and prostitution are not new problems.
A few pages in the book describe the workings of a meat processing plant. All too true, as the later investigations proved. The character (Jurgis) who worked there was later hospitalized, and found out where the market was for sub-standard goods: institutions where the consumers have no choice. There had been scandals about "embalmed beef" during the Spanish-American War.
The book is still as entertaining and educational today as it was when it was first published. Are things different today? Just read your newspapers. The last chapters are sometimes censored, they have become obsolete with the passage of time, and are a warning against adopting the latest fashions or trends that haven't been tested by time.
Two great authors for the price of one! The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of 'The Jungle' is worth buying for Eric Schlosser's foreword alone, let alone Upton Sinclair's gripping expose. As author of Fast Food Nation (which is a bit of 'The Jungle' of our time), Schlosser wastes no time in underlining how frighteningly similar Sinclair's meat-packing industry is today's fast-food empires.
Despite being eradicated through trust-busting, the monopolies have just expanded their influence by exploiting new technologies like television to hook customers when they're young. They've flourished like fat rats during the laissez-fare attitude of Reaganomics, continue to sell products known to be tainted, and are exploiting the many pitfalls of globalization. As a result, there are now even fewer special interests controlling the meat market than in 1905, Mexicans have replaced Lithuanians in the workplace, and obesity is wholesale worldwide.
Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' is an extraordinally brave, ambitious, and frightening book, but it is made all the more harrowing by how much it resembles today's markets. Times have not changed for the better and we are not back to where we were in 1905. Rather, the world is far-worse than it was in the jungles of Sinclair's magnum opus.
Jurgis experiences the highest levels of wealth as a politician and the lowest levels of poverty as a beggar. Although his repeated reversals of fortune are quite exaggerated, Sinclair effectively makes his point. He shows the huge gap between rich and poor and governmental corruption.
The last several chapters disappointingly lose the personal touch of Jurgi's experiences. Sinclair ends the novel with what amounts to direct socialist propaganda. It too certainly makes a convincing point (probably the main point Sinclair wanted to make), but it leaves the reader wanting a conclusion to Jurgi's character.
Good book...if you're a communist! I had to see what all the fuss was about, so I finally read Jungle. It started out pretty good, about an immigrant who struggles in a new country, trying to find work and housing. At the end of the book (and after many more unsuccessful struggles faced by the immigrant) Sinclair suggests that Socialism is the ideal way to guarantee work and shelter for everyone in the form of a speech given by a motivational speaker at the end of the book. This is in a manner reminiscent of John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged, also at the very end of the book. In both speeches, the author reveals their philosophy, but if your looking for true motivation from within, read the latter.
Eye Opening, except the ending I have been meaning to read this book for years as it's always been heralded as a monumental book that changed the meat packing industry and workers' rights in the early 20th century. Upon finally reading it this year (2006) I was stunned - mainly because I had read Fast Food Nation a few years ago and many things described in The Jungle had similarily been described in Fast Food Nation, which was written in 2005. The workers have simply shifted - instead of coming from Europe they are now from Mexico and other Latin American countries.
No doubt this book is eye opening - to the struggle of immigrants looking for a better place, to workers' rights (and lack thereof), to regulations of the food industry, to bribery and general disregard of the law due to greed. The ordeals and struggles Jurgis deals with are unbelieveable and when reading you'll keep thinking "Well, it can't get any worse" and yet somehow it does.
I did have a few difficulties in reading the book. First, for some reason I had (wrongly) assumed this was a non-fiction book ever since I read about it in Jr. High History class. This is a fiction novel, however it is based on Sinclair's studies of the meat packing industry and the tenements. Second, the characters are mostly of Lithuanian descent with extremely complex names. I had a bit of trouble keeping up with who everyone was in the beginning and kept getting everyone confused for the first 50 or so pages.
A general dislike from many readers is the ending. Throughout the book, Jurgis is depicted a simple country man, just wanting to earn a decent living and support his family. You do see his evolution in learning how to "work the system" to his advantage as he becomes more and more disenchanted with his new surroundings. Towards the end of the book, he finds Socialism. However, it's almost as if Sinclair forgets who his character is. While Jurgis might have found Socialism on his own and become extremely passionate, he would not have spoke in such educated and expressive words that Sinclair portrays. The end comes across as feeling "tacked on" by Sinclair himself and seem as if you are reading the end of a completely different novel. Still, this book is worth the read for the first several hundred pages anyway.
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Megaton Man
