The Jungle

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Summary: Could have been better without the socialistic propaganda
Review: The beginning of THE JUNGLE is excellent. The reader, with Jurgis Rudkus acting as all 5 senses, observes the misery and poverty that was all too common during the so-called "Gilded Age". The reader will probably notice, clearly, the similarities between the unregulated big businesses of then and the cries for the return to those days from big businesses of today. However, the characters, toward the middle of the novel, become bland. By the end of the book, Mr. Sinclair's political persuasions stand out too clearly, thus ruining the novel. All in all, THE JUNGLE is a great novel; one will probably not want to read it more than once, though.

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Summary: Meaningful & Well-Presented information . . .
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time . . . Very skillfully portrays the horrors of the Meat Packing Industry, as well as life for immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century. Recommended for anyone

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Summary: Great book....
Review: Do not wait any more!! Buy it and enjoy it... It is an excellent novel.

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Summary: A dark view of early 20th century American immigrant life
Review: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a dark, depressing look at the American immigrant experience around the turn of the Twentieth Century. In addition to the obvious attacks on the Chicago stockyard barons, Chicago politicians, labor practices, and food standards, The Jungle represents Sinclair's attack upon Capitalism, as well.

We follow the main character, Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, as he and his family establish themselves in Chicago and get to work in the great stockyard industry. He goes from healthy and strong to beaten down and broken, as stockyard accidents, political and commercial swindles, and a succession of personal tragedies eventually drive him to a life of starvation, drunkenness, petty crime, racketeering, and violence.

Sinclair does uncover numerous failures of the Capitalistic system, so I will not begrudge him his attack on the system. It should be pointed out, however, that this is a failure of Capitalism under a collection of exceptional circumstances: corrupt government and law-enforcement at all levels (nothing exceptional there, I hear you saying), combined perhaps with a weak or crooked press, and, most importantly, an unending, unorganized, bewildered stream of immigrant labor which did not speak English, did not understand its rights, and was unable, because of these reasons and because of never-ending fear for its livelihood, to complain. Most of these conditions do not prevail in today's developed world, at least, and not to the same extent and all at once, but The Jungle still serves as a warning concerning what can happen when the Invisible Hand is at work while the other hand covers the eyes of society.

The descriptions of the stockyards are horrifying. Horrifying. The work itself, when it goes according to plan, is grim, filthy, smelly, and difficult, at the best of times. When things do not go according to plan, we find sick and "downed" cattle being slaughtered after normal hours, when the largely decorative government inspectors aren't around; we find spoiled meat left sitting for months boiled in with the rest of the witches' brew that becomes canned meat; we find men slipping on the greasy floors over the boiling vats of soon-to-be canned meat and falling in, after which their bones-the only bits left-are fished out, and the rest stays in the canned meat mixture; we find children accidentally locked inside the buildings at night, where the rats eat them alive before their remains are discovered in the morning.

The cynical side of me tells me that people probably were more outraged about their tainted meat products than they were about the treatment of thousands of immigrants, but, in any case, Sinclair's story caught the public's attention. It appears less evident, though, that his rousing battle cry for Socialism, which took up the last 40 pages of my 290-page text, was heeded. I'm afraid Capitalism and its accompanying Pursuit of the American Dream already had taken hold for good by then.

I had to stop and think for a moment when I considered whether I thought this book was well-written or not. I don't think it matters terribly much, because the point of the story is more important than the quality of the story itself; however, purely for the dark mood of hopelessness running through the work, the writing is effective at worst and grimly evocative of the stark reality facing hundreds of thousands of immigrants at its best. While reading this, I often found myself thinking of the inscription on our treasured Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Yes, please send them-we have some use for them. We can keep them tired and poor, and as for huddled masses and wretched refuse, there's plenty of that in the stockyards. Give your family a couple of generations and we'll work on the breathing free bit. Welcome to America.

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Summary: A well written story, muddled by Propaghanda
Review: The Jungle is the tale of a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis, and the struggles he and his family face when they come to the United States with dreams of striking it rich in the Chicago's Packingtown district. What the family finds instead of the immediate success that was promised them is cruelty, lies, coldness, and betrayal at the hands of their fellow man. Upton Sinclair paints a brilliant mental image for the reader, exposing us to the horrors of life in the meat packing district. Although I won't go as far as other reviewers, who vow that you "will never eat meat again!" or possibly "will go vegetarian for at least a few months" because of this book's graphic depiction of the disgusting and horrendously unclean methods of slaughter and preperation, I will say that if you have a weak stomach and a vivid imagination, you may want to be aware of what this book chornicles.

With that said, my review is mixed. On the one hand, Sinclair does well to introduce us to the conflics and daily routine of the poor working-classes who strived for a better life at the turn of the century. However, I found the book to be too full of summary for my liking. Too often, instead of telling the story of Jurgis' point of view, the focus was too much on everyone else in packingtown, and Jurgis was just an observer. True, many very bad things happened to Jurgis, enough to show the reader how bad things really were back then, so little time was spent on exploring the characters in Jurgis' family and life that it was hard to make a connection. The book is also fairly uneven--the first one-hundred or so pages is about Packingtown, with Jurgis simply thrown in as a human face. Soon after, however, when tragedy strikes his family, we really begin to find out more about Jurgis; the kind of man he is, and the kind of man he has always been, and how he is changing, be it for the better or for the worse. His experiences as a homeless "tramp" make up the most interesting story-line in the whole novel. Up till then, and after then, it is mostly flat and rarely focuses on any characters at all. As I've said, the first part of the book is mostly summary; the second part becomes a story; the third, and final, is all political testimony, and let me say that because of this the ending leaves alot to be desired. We find out what happens to the Socialist party in this book, but not of Jurgis and his family! Perhaps that is where I am the most frustrated by this novel. By the last chapter, Jurgis has become just a name the author gives to remind (or fool) the reader into thinking we're reading a novel and not a manifesto of sorts. The fact is, if Sinclair wanted to convince the world the horrible ways of Capitalism and the wonders of Socialism, he would have done far better to continue and finsish the novel through the eyes of Jurgis, and how the world affects him, not by a long-winded "conversation" between high-ranking Socialist Party members! In the end, the well told story of Jurgis' experiences in America becomes lost in a book that could hardly be called a novel at all. For his writing skills, I'll give Sinclair an A+, but for his ability as a story teller, I must give him a C-. So much more could have been written in this book, but instead the reader istrapped by politics.

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Summary: Only the strong survive
Review: Beginning my quest on reading the 100 finest novels of the 20th century I began with the Jungle. I am glad it was my start. It clearly instructs where the Unions came from. It shows capitalism at its greediest. Socialism shines in those days but luckily the world found it didn't work. It was a wonderful novel except the last 35 or 40 pages which was only a speech of socialism which is now a moot point. I will read more of Mr. Sinclairs novels I hope I am as satisfied with the others as I was with the Jungle.

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Summary: The Jungle
Review: What I thought about this book was that Upton Sinclair did a very good job on describing the hardships of immigrants coming to the United States for the first time. The base of the story in my opinion was very depressing to read. Jurgis when he first arrives is already scan dueled by his travel agent. The book is depressing also because things only seem to become worse for Jurgis. His work does not pay much, his wife is forced t cheat on him, he is put in jail multiply times, his new child die along with his wife, his son dies later, he lives life as a hobo for awhile and he is constantly poor. The description of the working conditions and how the meatpacking industry worked in the 1900's was grow test. It made me really think about eating meat for at least a week. But towards the end of the book Jurgis is given hope for the future. This book was a hard one to get through, was very informative for me. It really opened my eye to the injustice that was going on and that is still going on in some part of the world.

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Summary: An Antiquated, And Flawed View, But A Worthwhile Read
Review: Having read this as a high school freshman, I decided to take a new look at "The Jungle". "The Jungle", a model of the propongandistic novel, is the tale of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant to the Packing house district of Chicago. Written in 1905, it tells the story of Jurgis' working class family which had come to America in search of a better life.

Arriving full of hope, Jurgis sought advancement through a home with the family, the Lithuanian Community, the Church, the industrial machine and politics. Time after time, the naive workman was taken by those whom Upton Sinclair regarded as the oppressors of the people. Every time Jurgis thought that he was a cog in the machine, he ended up being discarded when he was no longer useful to those in whom Jurgis had placed his trust.

Upton Sinclair was disappointed with the results of his book. Intended to win converts to socialism, it was his description of conditions in the packing houses which aided in the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

"The Jungle" can be appreciated on a number of levels. The action is well paced and holds the reader's interest. As a work of propaganda, it is a model specimen. As an historical insight, it lets the reader into the mind of an early Twentieth Century Socialist reformer. As a report of the life of the early industrial worker, it is entertaining, even if its details are exaggerated for effect. As a political statement, "The Jungle" is in the eyes of the reader. For the true believer, it conveys the truth. For the modern conservative, it is an antiquated and flawed view of the world, which, as time has shown, proposed a remedy which was never right. Which ever camp you fall into, or somewhere in between, "The Jungle" is worth a first, or a second, reading.

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Summary: A wonderful and accurate historical portrayal of immigrants.
Review: This book is a wonderful look into the lives of an immigrant family in the early 1900's. Upton Sinclair was assigned to do an expose on the meatpacking industry in Chicago. The amazing part, what some people do not realize, is how factual the book really is. Since the book was published, only one discrepancy from the truth has been found; the inspector wore a different uniform. Sinclair's original topic was to inform the world of how "workingmen", as called by Sinclair, of the time were treated in the meatpacking plants of Chicago. Instead, the public centered on his description of how the meat was processed and reacted to that part of the story. This is one of the direct causes of the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Sinclair is noted as saying, "I aimed for [the public's] heart, and hit their stomach."

The novel itself chronicles a Lithuanian family who immigrates to America in an effort to make a better life. Though this is not a factual family, many of it hardships were shared by families of this time period. The story is told through the experiences of the protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus. Jurgis is a good man at heart and tries his best to support his family. His efforts are met only with defeat. In many instances his family is taken advantage of because they cannot speak the language and do not understand the culture. Sinclair did a wonderful job describing the horrific conditions of immigrants and the "workingmen" in this time period.

The scenes in the meatpacking facilities get quite graphic and gruesome at some points. Though this may disturb some, I believe it does a good job of giving the story some meat, no pun intended. The original basis of the story was to expose bad working conditions. These horrific incidents suffered by workers are described quite well, from losing of fingers while working, to falling into the vats of cooking meat and never being retrieved. I believe that all the gory details were described very well and were written in a realistic way that added to the story's purpose, which was to expose the meatpacking industry.

It seems Sinclair had a hard time ending the book. In the last few chapters, Socialism is advocated as the answer to all wrongs. Sinclair, being a Socialist himself, may have wanted to add some of his own ideas to the end in order to try to sway the public's belief. I believe this detracted from the book and left the story dangling. Other than this fact, the entire book is well written, and I highly recommend it. The Jungle kept me intrigued, which many classics do not do, and I do not regret reading it in the least.