The Jungle

Rating:
Summary: I Like
Review: Great book. I had to read it for a book report, and I'm happy to have chosen it. The language is very easy to understand, yet it is quite descriptive in explaining the environment of the working class in the early 1900's.

Rating:
Summary: If you eat, read this book...
Review: Upton Sinclair was required reading for me back in the good ol' school days. This was one book on the required list that I enjoyed. It is a compelling and horrible story about turn of the century business practices and industry's complete lack of compassion for human beings.

I had forgotten how good it was and recently re-read it. It is the story of Jurgis and his family, who immigrate to America, and who are misled from the very beginning, exploited by everyone along their path for the few pennies that could be squeezed from them. They are charged for just being brought to America, then cheated on their home purchase, obtain jobs that underpay and overwork them, develop health problems from unsanitary and inhumane working conditions, are forced into poverty and to live and work in squalor, and finally they either die or their spirits break.

The story is heartbreaking especially because of all the truth that was included in it. The meatpacking industry was indeed a brutal, unsanitary, and inhumane industry in the early 1900's, the new Industrial Processors had no incentive or reason to produce clean products or working areas. Immigrants were pouring into the country by the hundreds and were seen only has disposable labor rather than human beings.
Wow, great book! But then toward the end Mr. Sinclair does pull out his spiel on Socialism, which he was into at the time, and the pace of the book slows down a great deal. Without this unwanted lecture on the wonders of Socialism, the book would have been a 5 star.

Rating:
Summary: "Pure Food and Drug Act"
Review: Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" was the catalyst that changed the way food processing companies did business at the turn of the century. This book promped Teddy Roosevelt, on June 30, 1906, to sign the Pure Food and Drug Act and also The Federal Meat Inspection Law. Can you imagine eating meat that has been tainted with turberculocis and no telling what else (and this happened all the time). When I go to the grocery store and buy food, I would never think that the store I trust to buy my food would sell rotten meat and the store knowing it. But then again, I have also taken things for granted and never really thinking about them. At the turn of the century, there were no laws to govern the safety of food. There were also no laws to protect workers' rights. There was no such thing as unemployment insurance to protect workers in case of a layoff and no workmans' comp in case of an injury. Workers labored in dangerous conditions for just pennies a day. This book makes you think. Everyone should read "The Jungle".

Rating:
Summary: An emotional, sensational book
Review: Upton Sinclair is an amazing writer in that he provokes the reader into the strongest emotions while the reader moves through the book. The story begins with Jurgis, the main character, getting married to Ona, his fiance with whom he immigrated to America from Lithuania. The tale makes it's way through the life they've built together (and with Ona's family) in the meat-packing district of Chicago. One enraging situation after another occurs throughout the book, from the deaths of family members to the ways that the owners of the meat-packing companies would, in a sense, enslave their workers (survival of the fittest plays a big role here). The characters are interesting, from the main characters, to the "bit players" such as Jurgis' cellmate when he gets thrown in jail for beating up Ona's boss, Connor. There is a point in the book in which Jurgis decides to leave Chicago to roam the countryside, and you can feel the warmth and greenery of summer as he sets out on his way. Each time Jurgis gets "screwed over" (for lack of a better term) you feel like throwing down the book, because Upton Sinclair very realistically portrays the hopelessness Jurgis feels about his situation. If you want to read an unforgettable book, I highly recommend this tale.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book, Very Descriptive
Review: In Upton Sinclair's Jungle, the author attempts to make known the evils of the industries and capitalist businesses in Chicago in the early 1900's. The main character Jurgis was part of a lower class immigrant family from Lithuania that came to the US for a new start on life. They explain their illusion of the many chances that the country gives and decide to try and do as well as their friend Jokubas Szedvilas had done. However, as Jurgis starts work; as well as the rest of the family including Antanas, Ona, and Marija; they discover that the "land of the free" is not as forgiving as they had expected. Sinclair shows Jurgis's disillusionment and counters them with problems of the Chicago meatpacking industry such as the poor working conditions, gross employee exploitation, job insecurities, and most abundantly the drive of capitalism. I think this a very well written book and from what I have learned in history, it is also very true. The author uses great descriptions to show the inhumane conditions at the factories. Sinclair also does a great job uncovering the evils of Capitalism. Some people may not like this book due to the graphic nature, but I liked it. It got my attention and kept it.

Rating:
Summary: "Hot Dogs for Everyone?" Let's review some basic US history!
Review: That reviewer a few reviews down said this book was stupid...Mr. N. obviously still thinks this book is complete fiction and has probably never had a United States history lesson in his comfortable life. Does he know this book is almost 100 years old? Now pay attention, Mr.! This book has more truth in it regarding the history of the working and living conditions for the immigrants; Jurgis's fictional family is a template, their experiences were commplace and can be surperimposed over many immigrant families of that time. Capitalism was brutal at the turn of the century, bosses' compassion for the workers was considered ludicrous and wasteful. The workers were wage slaves since the industry paid them as much as the lowest bidder/worker would take, that's why it was a life or death struggle against poverty and starvation everyday of their lives, SO IS THAT STUPID? Is Mr. N. so silly that he doesn't believe that those who were injured on the job (the bosses set a maddening pace to increase productivity around dangerous equipment at the workers expense) would be replaced within minutes by a substitute clamouring outside for that bloody, dangerous job that paid pennies per hour because he was about to starve or loose his home - if he even had one? Mr. N lives in an excruciatingly small and cloudy bubble, he obviously has no concern for the abuses they suffered, [was it too long ago for him to care?] these people really existed, Ding-dong! Read Jacob Riis' book "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVED" to see what their living conditions were like, but after reading The Jungle, these lost souls may have too exhaused from their working day to see exactly where they were living, they may have felt lucky enough to collapse on a piece of rat-free floor, but lots were not so lucky. This was NOT A STUPID STORY, it was a true representation of what it was like to come to this country looking for freedom and comfort, while being taken for everything they had. And the last part of the book's focus is Socialism, but Mr. N doesn't know that that was one of the only solutions presented to the world to fix the plight of the working class. Individual tenement worker's contributions were barely enough to reach the masses, so here was the another solution.
We really screwed these people, 'we' meaning the white middle class. These people have died in vain unless we recognize their anguish. Equate it to 100 years from now someone making fun of the victims of the World Trade Center, that would be insensitive and just plain STUPID. Each time I read Mr. N's review I get the chills, I had higher hopes for contemporary intellect, I'm just hoping that perhaps Mr. N is one of a kind and just needs a history refresher and who really didn't know what he was talking about.

Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: The Jungle is not only an excellent work of fiction, but also a historical monument. Sinclair uses graphic and depicting methods to grasp his reader and make them think about the hardships his fictional characters are undergoing. I found that his using of a fictional family to accurately show the corrupt meat industry and working class was an excellent way to appeal to readers of all ages. While his book started out on solid ground as it progressed I felt that it was starting to sink, and by the end it was well past sunk. I think that if Sinclair hadn't tried to switch to socialism, which he had so much opposed in the previous pages of his book, his novel would have been much better. However, I don't think that Sinclair's intention was to write an excellent novel and a superb ending, but simply to write a novel that got a point across. That point being that change was necessary, and I think he successfully got that point across. Overall I felt that Sinclair did a very good job of depicting the hardships of his time, and I'd recommend to everyone to go out and read his book; if not for the historical value, just for the fact of reading something different and unique.

Rating:
Summary: It's a book out there.
Review: Set in the early 1900's, The Jungle follows the life of a Lithuanian immigrant in America as he, time and time again, gets shafted in all his transactions. It's so bad, in fact, that one feels the character's life will never turn out for the better. But conflict is what makes a book interesting, and that's why I enjoyed reading a great part of The Jungle. But while The Jungle is known best for its revealing material on corrupt industries, the main focus of Sinclair's novel is actually Socialism. Once Jurgis, our tough-lucked hero, finds a place in Socialism, the whole book falls to pieces. It simply isn't any fun to read anymore. If you do ever read this book, you can very well skip over the Socialism stuff. Read this for the story, not the politics.

Rating:
Summary: Meat stinks... (read on)
Review: This is a very strong book though not at all pleasant. It think it is a good book in that it tells a story of darkness that most people would rather not see.

The book follows the life of an immigrant family which works closely with the local meatpacking factories. (Seemingly to
compare the disregard of meat carcasses to a system of
disregard for people and cheap labor.)

There never seems to be a moment of happiness in the book, but
I do recommend it for the strong at heart (and of stomach), as it reminds us that we should open our eyes to all that is around us. (As this book caused so much upset in people that the pure food act was passed later that year, after the detailed descriptions of meat packing conditions.) That even if we close our eyes, these things affect us. In additional it was a book with a HUGE historical impact on the United States.

(It's also a good book to convert people to becoming vegetarians!)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting reading
Review: If you are considering reading this book: 1) Read it! 2) Read the novel, then the excellent introduction (I've never read an introduction I liked so well.) I recommend you read this book not because it is such an incredible piece of literature but because of it's importance when it came out. The novel's central story is what happens to an immigrant family working in the Chicago stockyards in the early 1900s. Some reviewers have blasted the book's pro-Socialism, anti-capitalism slant. I think that is a bit silly; the last few pages are somewhat of a Socialist manifesto, but it doesn't interfere with the rest of the novel being an interesting read. While every conceivable bad thing happens to the protagonist, and while such occurrences may seem outlandish and unlikely, it is still important for us to consider that they could have happened; it is still important for us to consider how such calamities and uneducated choices can shape our lives. When the book was published, public attention focused not on the plight of the immigrant protagonist, but on the conditions in the packing plants and slaughterhouses. Sinclair meticulously researched this part of the book, and all his claims were supported but one (that of a man ending up in a bucket of lard). I have been to present day slaughterhouses and packing plants, and I know that conditions today are sanitary and humane for the most part. However, the book gave me an appreciation that this was not always the case. As you read the novel, consider your reaction if you had been reading it when it was first published; consider also the choices you would have made as the immigrant protagonist.