Rating: 
Summary: Great Literature with unique irony and social commentary
Review: I decided to finally read this classic after reading Schlosser's work this year, Fast Food Nation. He mentioned the terrible conditions of the meat-packing plants today and I wanted to get an idea of what they began with back in Sinclair's time. I found this book to move very quickly as the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his demise is extensively fascinating.We begin with Jurgis and his family leaving Lithuania to come to the 'free' land of America for more opportunities. What they find is a situation where they pay their life savings for a home which they don't really own, a situation in which jobs are scarce and the available ones are very dangerous, and a plethora of new diseases and ailments which take away members of the family bit by bit. I enjoy the intense irony of this story because they came for freedom and found they themselves locked in poverty because of the capitalist society. The usurping heads of the meat industry end up controlling much more than their wages and their work hours. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Ah, The Good Old Days.
Review: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is fascinating reading. This history lesson is a treatise on the turn-of-the-century meat-packing industry, and hardships facing uneducated immigrants in pre-depression Chicago. The fictional tale opens with Lithuanian laborer, Jurgis Rudkis emigrating to America with his extended family in search of opportunity and a better life. With no language or trade skills the family follows a familiar path, landing in the Chicago stockyards where the work is hard, long, dangerous, and low-pay; and living conditions are horrendous. Sinclair proceeds with an oddly distant narrative style to describe one setback after another for Jurgis and family, painting a picture of utter hopelessness, with blame aplenty for all the institutions of society. This litany of despair includes injury, famine, death, loss of employment, drunkenness, prostitution, political corruption, infidelity, crime, and on and on. While the tale certainly grabs one's attention and is well-written, it's hard to imagine that such a dismal existence was shared by as many as he claims. The book had a major impact in its time. Public outcry over the meat industry's safety abuses, from tainted product to callous treatment of workers, resulted in health regulation (the birth of the FDA) and employment reform. We are all better off today because of the abysmal conditions he brought to light. But Sinclair failed with his primary agenda. In the end, The Jungle is a Socialist Manifesto, rife with exaggeration and inane anti-Capitalist rhetoric. Capitalism has survived--and thankfully so. The fictional tale of woeful Jurgis and family is a set-up, a pretense to rail on the evils of capitalism, and laud the virtues of his Socialist utopia. The picture he paints of American society is bleak indeed, and partially accurate. But most of the shortcomings he highlights were caused not by an inherently flawed political system, but by rampant corruption. No system is perfect. An underestimated factor in American success is its citizens' never-ending quest for truth and justice. We don't tolerate graft and corruption for long. Nixon and Clinton (though we failed to convict both) are examples of our system's greatest successes, not worst failures: the ability to peacefully purge ourselves of the cancer and get back on track. Socialism, on the other hand, has been proven time and again to be fatally flawed. Cuba and the Soviet Union are but two examples. At its core is the concept that the weak and less fortunate--as well as the ignorant, uneducated, lazy, corrupt, and evil--must do as well economically as others. This sounds fair and humane. Unfortunately it fails to recognize that when the incentive to work harder to better one's circumstance in life is eliminated, no one works harder. The system is doomed to failure. Thankfully, early readers of The Jungle rallied to reform labor laws and food safety regulation, and left democracy well enough alone to heal itself. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.
Rating: 
Summary: Over the top exageration forces readers to miss the point.
Review: The Jungle has many times been critisized has political propoganda. I believe that Sincliar set himself up for that by going over the top with this book. Undoubtedly the working conditions were horrendous in any major city. Even if the story he relates were true (and it is not), the strokes of misfortune that befall our tragic hero are grossly unrealistic. It seems so improbable, it is simple to dismiss. The book also drags on for quite awhile and is written in a dry and passive way. Anything but terse, the exacerbatingly long and dreary prose lack action and life.
Rating:
Summary: important book in american history
Review: This book is a very interesting look at the life of the immigrants in the early 1900's. This book had a huge a impact on society and is considered one the most influenial books in American history. It gives very detailed accounts of the stockyards, slums, unions and general city life for the poor of Chicago. I do not feel that Sinclair is a particularly great writer in the sense that his writing isn't very poetic and the characters' run into almost too much bad luck to seem realistic, but the book is very informative. By the end Sinclair writes a bunch of socialist propaganda, trumping it as the only hope for the common man due to the oppressions of capitalism. The book had more impact on factory life and food than on the politics of America. This is definitely a must read for anyone interested in American History or politics or labor or socialism or overthrowing capitalism.
Rating:
Summary: Life in an Urban Jungle
Review: Everyone has heard of this book, but few have read it. It is NOT a muck-raking investigation into the meat processing industry! It is a novel about an immigrant European family that comes to Chicago (at the end of the century) and is destroyed in that urban jungle. Drugs, crime, and prostitution are not new problems. A few pages in that book describe the workings of a meat processing plant. All too true, as the later investigations proved. The character who worked there was later hospitalized, and found out where the market was for sub-standard goods: institutions where the consumers have no choice! Remember, 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? Not if you read some current reports.
Rating:
Summary: overall good book but without single focus
Review: This book was excellent overall, with a fascinating plot and well-developed characters. Sinclair vividly described the deplorable working conditions and gave sickening accounts of how food at the Chicago stockyards was prepared. He also shared the poignant story of an immigrant family who suffered through myriad trying events and told of pervasive corruption in the city's politics. However, Sinclair's message would be more powerful if he had concentrated on either the disgusting food preparation or the plight of the working class. His two points were diluted, which left the book a little unfocused.
Rating: 
Summary: Could a Communist agenda be more apparent?
Review: Maybe it could considering the current reviews. This book is trash. It sickens your stomach and makes anyone in a managment position appear to be an evil scrooge who will gladly kill a man for a buck. The story is depressing and exaggerated. The last two chapters could have been taken out of the Communist Manifesto. Just a lowsy book that I was forced to read in school. The only good it can do is to make each and every one of its reader vegetarian.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for the modern age.
Review: Chicago may have changed a lot since Upton Sinclair penned this novel about worker exploitation at the turn of the century, but in many ways it has not changed. The exploitation is still there, it simply has a new face. "The Jungle" is a touching and tragic a book about the exploitation of immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry in Chicago. The protagonist of the story is a never-say-die type of fellow throughout the story, but even he cannot defeat the forces allied against him. This tale was so revolutionary new laws were passed to abolish the sort of foul practices that will touch your heart.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not to the very last drop.
Review: Ah, this book started out so strongly. And ended so weakly. The book begins with a gripping - and awfully realistic - portrait of the working-class, immigrant family of the turn of the century. The oppression against the Rudkuses is wonderfully done in the first few chapters, and watching Jurgis drift about in life makes the reader sympathize with this poor man. Then the story reaches a point that is something like a climax, where something huge should happen to Jurgis, bringing resolution to the story. In a way, that happens, but in a way, it's as if Sinclair said to himself, "Well, I'm done here. Time to the end the book. What to do, what to do?" So Sinclair throws in three chapters on Jurgis converting to Socialism. To top it all off, the last three chapters aren't really about Jurgis so much as why Socialism is so great and wonderful and will the salvation to our society. If only the book hadn't evolved into an essay on Socialism - hardly enough to carry a novel - this would have been a true five-star book.
Rating: 
Summary: A pure propaganda novel
Review: If you are like me and first heard about this book in history class, most likely the only thing you remember is the name of the book, its author and the part about the sausage. After hearing how disgusting certain parts of this book could be, I was intrigued to discover the plot behind the grossness. I was sorely disappointed. Sinclair's characters are flat, to say the least, and are mere backdrops for his opinion. In my experience, the ending was the worst section. Sinclair spent so much time and energy presenting his opinion through his character's tragic life. However, at the end, a complete 180 is performed and a non-developed character rants for several pages about socialistic philosophy and theology. There is hardly any transition much less a smooth one. Upon completion of this book, I reflected on the hopelessness of the situation. Sinclair put all his hope into a philosophy that has failed. He aspired to write a great socialist novel and the only concrete item it brought about was the Pure Food and Drug Act. How utterly disappointing.
| 
