Upton Sinclairs The Jungle Injustice for Immigrants in early 1900s Chicago The notorious city of Chicago has

s been known as the epicenter of crime and corruption for decades. There is widespread information about the gang activity that arose there in the 20s and 30s, but Chicago has been a victim of criminal activity and corruption even before early 1900s era. An often surpassed notion is that of the Union Stockyards (aka Packingtown) located just outside the city center of Chicago a large stretch of land reserved for food production factories. The meatpacking industry in particular shot through the roof after industrialization in the late 1800s and by 1921 employed 40,000 people many of them immigrants. As a result of the Beef Trusts push to be as efficient as possible for the smallest price, the working conditions for the average factory worker were unsanitary, dangerous, and both men and women were paid phenomenally low wages. Upton Sinclair, in his most famous work, The Jungle, details through historical fiction the adventurous life of Jurgis Radkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who begins working in the Chicago union stockyards immediately after his arrival to the United States. Sinclair depicts in great detail the meat packing process, the dirty, disgusting things that both the workers and the meat went through at the factories, and the injustices that the factory workers and the other poor working class people endured as a result of the beef trust corruption. In The Jungle, the nature of injustice towards poor immigrants and the lower class is broad and prevails in an endless number of ways. He touches not only on immigration and the unfair treatment of the lower class but also on the corruption and greed of the upper class. Sinclair is able to elicit sympathy for the victimized characters using detailed imagery that clearly defines the injustices and a consistently subtle tone intertwined into a very realistic narrative pattern.

The actual working conditions of the factories in the 1900s were not as gruesome as Sinclair depicts, but his over-exaggeration in this case is ultimately what convinces the reader to pay attention to his story. Through Jurgis narration, Sinclair tells in his novel the true working conditions in the factories There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instancelet a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one (119). Browns and Durhams, the large companies that sold the meat from the stockyards would advertise potted chicken the things that went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of porkthey put these up in several grades, and sold them at several prices (118). This is all likely a slight stretch from the truth, these words certainly do catch the readers attention. In communicating the injustices that the victimized characters endure to the reader, these eyecatching anecdotes and details about the meatpacking process are what prove the abuse of these poor working class families. Sinclair uses this same tactic to depict other injustices. The largest disadvantage that Jurgis family and every other immigrant family have is their nationality. Because they are bound to a completely different lifestyle and only somewhat understand the language, it is easier for them to be taken advantage of. Sinclair tells us that there were many such danger, in which the odds were all against themhow could they know that the pale blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde besides (93). There are women and girls who are sexually harassed and slandered into prostitution at the expense of their job placements. In short, the devastation is endless. Even as Jurgis and his 11 other companions decide to purchase their own house, the language and social barrier prevents them from being treated fairly. They are subjected to unfair taxes and kept in the dark about the true construction of the house. They might have done it, if only they could have gotten pure

food, and at fair prices; or if only they had known what to get if they had not been so pitifully ignorant! But they had come to a new country, where everything was different, including the foodhow could they know that what they bought in America was not the same that its colour was made by chemicals and its smoky flavour by more chemicals, and that it was full of potato flour besides(140). All of these scenes are shocking; they wake you up and create an in depth picture in your head of what these characters were going through. Without a vivid image of the characters situations, the reader would not be able to feel sorry for them. Injustices that create such blatant, conspicuous prejudice are burned images through immaculate diction. Another way that Sinclair elicits sympathy for the victims in his novel is through the nonchalant tone and realistic feel that he uses from start to finish. The reader is more likely to feel sorry for Jurgis and his family if he/she can relate to him in some way. Although Jurgis is a fictional character, readers are able to recognize his struggle and react to his pain. The primary readers of The Jungle and those who would be most affected by its message are the average lower middle class of America, so the fact that Jurgis and his family are lower-class, working people makes their story more relatable to the average reader. Sinclair exclaims to the reader that It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed every day, by eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was simply not enough to feed them (141). To feed a family is a natural human instinct, and this is one of the main obstacles that Jurgis encounters consistently throughout the narrative. The simple fact that Jurgis is truly trying, and doing everything he can to support his family, all extended relatives included, makes him appear as an honorable man that is deserving of sympathy. Aside from making the narrative realistic and relatable, Sinclair elicits sympathy for the victims of The Jungle by creating a carefree tone that allows the reader plenty of room to use their imaginations. During this time that Jurgis was looking for work

occurred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both Kristoforas and his brother Juozapas were cripples, the latter having lost one leg having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him to ever to walk. And now he dies. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export. The way in which Sinclair chooses to communicate this in the book is strange. Instead of purposely making this a dramatic event, detailing the facial expressions and the reactions of the characters, he opts to make it simple: Teta Elzbietas son died a very horrible death. And this is what the readers are imagining in their heads a gruesome scene that only their mind can create. The way in which Sinclair chooses to elaborate more on the insignificant details rather than the big picture makes the situation more dramatic, and causes the reader to be empathetic with the victims. Fundamentally, Upton Sinclair employs all these literary devices well. He is successful in creating empathy for the victims in his story by using vivid imagery and a realistic tone, but his message is ultimately lost. At the conclusion of the novel Sinclair abandons the original plot and goes on to tell about Jurgis conversion to socialism and his quest to spread the word of his newfound beliefs. It would likely be more understandable if Sinclairs message was that of the corruption that capitalism brings about, but he never fully addresses the solution that needs to be implicated for the victims in the situation. It seems as though Sinclairs belief is that the solution to the corruption is Socialism, but considering that this solution is both unrealistic and unsatisfying to his primary readers, this latter part of the narrative is meaningless. The writing in the majority of the novel is excellent and from it emerged an entire food production revolution

for our society, but The Jungle could have definitely done without an added propaganda for Socialism. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/804.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Stock_Yards http://www.umich.edu/~eng217/student_projects/nkazmers/corrupt1.html http://iu-iusm-emer.ads.iu.edu:8081/iuem/advocacy/blog/Walthall%20Final %20Epidemiology%20Paper%20Fall%202010.pdf