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Harrison Chan

AP English

Ms. Nicholson

21 November 2009

The Jungle vs. a Modern Day Immigrant

In 1906, Upton Sinclair first released The Jungle, in the periodical Appeal to Reason,

hoping to shed light on the horrible living conditions, prejudice, and economic injustices

immigrants of the early 20th century faced when arriving in the United States, a sharp contrast to

the relative peace and ease with which Dinali Weerakkodi immigrated to the US. Today, in the

21st century, legal immigrants face far better living conditions when arriving in the US. Though

some immigrants still face prejudice and discrimination, laws and reform prevent employers

from discriminating based on the race of immigrants, and children across the country are equally

loved and cherished as the future of America. The eyes of society are no longer so thoroughly

masked by the blinkers that prevented us from seeing the horrors of the industries where most

immigrants found themselves employed.

Dinali Weerakkodi made her journey over 9000 miles of ocean in a relatively

comfortable airline seat and landed with hardly a jostle on the runway of Los Angeles

International Airport in less than a day. Compare her journey to the grueling weeks Jurgis’s

family spent on an ocean liner packed like cattle in the hold, living and sleeping in festering

human sewage, and her journey seems a king’s voyage. In the US, every major city, town, and

suburb has running water and septic systems. Dinali lives in a comfortable suburb with paved

streets, sidewalks, air conditioning, and most other amenities needed for a comfortable average

life. It is a major difference from the mud, slums, and streets Jurgis and his family lived on, none
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of which had paved streets, and in most cases, with streets ankle-deep or more in mud. Dinali has

no life-or-death need that cannot be satisfied quickly and easily in today’s society.

Minority immigrants, particularly Hispanics, who come to the US are the ones faced

with the lowest level jobs in our economic hierarchy. They are the janitors, the cleaners, the

garbage men, but they also receive many of the benefits that a working man of the early 20th

century could only dream about. Dinali’s family came to America with friends and relatives

already acclimated to the US. Their friends arranged honest jobs and housing for them as soon as

they had landed, unlike the total cluelessness Jurgis faced arriving in the US. They have found

none of the “industry secrets” that involve toxic poisons, rotting flesh, and diseased animals

being fed into our country’s food supply. Her parents work good jobs, and she and her sister

enjoy a life that seems high-class when compared to Jurgis’s family.

Every weekday from 9:15 AM to 4:15 PM, Dinali and her sister attend a public school

where good teachers teach them the topics that will further their education and give them their

ticket to life in the “Land of Opportunity”. They do not walk miles in the cold, through mud

swamped streets, but instead take a, relatively, warm bus to school. She and her sister are not

rushed around, and forced to fall into the clutches of society’s evils, rather society pampers and

loves them, trying it’s best to make the lives of all America’s children better. There are entire

divisions of the government devoted solely to making sure no child feels left behind in school.

Every year, billions are spent on ensuring the “equality” of America’s children in education.

Thousands are tasked with making sure the food that goes to America’s children is healthy and

safe, not laced with formaldehyde or colored with acids.

In the hundred years since Upton Sinclair released The Jungle, the quality of life and

travel to and in America has improved tenfold for immigrants like Dinali Weerakkodi. The

housing that immigrants find is not always as cheap, but it is most certainly of better quality,
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with no one sleeping in their own sewage out of necessity. Employers have no monopolistic

control over employment, grafting for jobs occurs, as it always will, but not to so far as to put

others on countrywide blacklists. The wealthy of society who have the most power to exact

change no longer wear blinkers to shield themselves from the worst, but instead move to help the

poor as they rightly should, per Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth as a statement of sharing, for he

believed that to die rich was a greedy man’s death.