Customer Reviews

The Jungle (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (B&N Classics)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Upton Sinclair transports us into a realm beyond our imagination. "The Jungle", which takes place in the Chicago stockyards in the early 1900s, adequatley shows the cruel treatment of immigrants and poor working and living conditions of proletariat in that era. Descriptive passages on the preparation and lack thereof of meat in the stockyards will undoubtably make your stomach churn (I didn't even want to eat meat for days). The novel made me laugh and cry, and it is indeed a great classic to be enjoyed and reflected upon for decades to come.
The true beauty of this novel is in the subtle style in which Sinclair implanted his Socialist political views. After being gently set up throughout the text of the novel, Sinclair drives home Socialist views in the last two chapters. Later books, such as George Orwell's "1984", highlights the dangers of a Socialist government that ultimatley discredits Sinclair's opinions. Though I disagree with Socialist principles, the style in which they were presented in "The Jungle" is incomparable.
I recommend this novel to anyone who is looking for a good read. This is one book that can go as deep as you want it to, whether you're reading it for pleasure or for English class. It will always be one of my personal favorites, and will hopefully become one of your's as well.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is the most shocking piece of literature that I have ever read. This almost compares with literature I have read about the Holocaust death camps, except that the immigrants are not murdered directly by their brutal slave drivers, instead they die from the poverty, disease, and starvation that envelopes them because of their low-wage jobs or unemployment. The novel is easy to understand and follow with many metaphors and straight forward writing that makes the story all the more horrifying.
The slaughtering of the hogs is like the treatment of the immigrant workers by their employers. They are worked until they will no longer produce a large profit and then they are discarded. It's all very dehumanizing, so much so that they were treated about as poorly as the Jews in prison camps were; only they were not shot or gassed.

I couldn't put the book down. As horrifying as it all is, I just had to keep on going and learn more. I recommend that anyone and everyone should read this book, especially those who are interested in history. As horrible as it sounds, I really liked reading this book because it makes me feel more aware of how things were at one time. I feel like I'm witnessing the horrible circumstances in memory of all of those immigrants who died in vain. We all should do that in honor of those who did not experience the "American dream" because we are lucky enough to be able to enjoy it.

This novel has so many meanings...Not only is it the story of a man that goes to America in search of a better life- it's the harsh critique of the reality of the American society. It depicts the struggle of the social classes that strive to achieve a better life, submissed in poverty, and despair...A confrontation between two powers- the rich and the poor.

This book makes us take notice in many things that are a reality in society, and not just that occured back in 1904, on the contrary, are still occuring...That gap that exists between people, although living in the same place, but are miles apart.

This book is not only about the conditions of a meat house plant. Look beyond. Read between the lines. You will find so many messages in this book. If you read carefully you'll notice. Bravo Upton... God bless "America."

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.

I approached The Jungle like I would a treadmill, or a dose of medicine.

A bit taxing, I figured, for all its Socialist leanings. And probably a tad wearisome too, written in times and circumstances so foreign to my own. But I would learn something; renew my appreciation, perhaps, for today's abundance that surrounds me, these cell phones and laptops and automobiles! It would serve my spirit well.

So I swallowed it down. And it did.

But the tale of Jurgis Rudkus is more than just a tonic. It is a tale of one of the fiercest struggles ever laid to paper. The conditions of Chicago's Packingtown are at once gruesome and abominable. We read of Jurgis' clan of Lithuanian immigrants, fleeced in ignorance, come to snatch a piece of the American dream, and find their ensuing poverty hard to fathom, yet strangely inevitable.

But we've read of such things before.

What in fact Sinclair portrays so uniquely here is the persistence of hard times, and the hopelessness engendered by them. Jurgis and his family summon hope in admirable draughts, only to find it squelched by a bestiary of foremen, magistrates, and realtors; even changes in the weather, or, too often, a lapse in good judgement, add to the maelstrom. These are good, hard-working people. But one by one, Jurgis and his loved ones sacrifice their health, their values, and their lives. And still the city deals its merciless blows, dragging them off into alleys and killing rooms more ruthless than its prisons.

When examined through the lens of today, The Jungle makes a compelling argument for moral relativism. In contemporary America, where most of us speak freely and live well, to be governed by the scourge of Socialism seems preposterous. But if we imagine our tables laid bare, our children's soles stopped with newspapers, we appreciate how these seeds could be planted. And we begin, most importantly, to consider the working men of other nations, for even now they may endure as Sinclair has so skillfully related here.

So I had to read Sinclair's The Jungle for my history class, and through lack of a physical book I ended up reading most of it in one night and on my computer, since it's in the public domain now.

The book itself is pretty good. Rather easy to read in terms of language, and it draws you into the story of a family of Lithuanian immigrants and their struggles to survive in the early 1900's in Chicago. It tells of how the common worker is screwed at every corner, with scams of buying a house, losing his jobs at a moments notice, having to buy substandard, nutritionless food, and the dangers of working in factories with no concern for their safety or well-being. It was far too easy to get into an accident and lose a hand or get crushed it seems.

Jurgis, the main character, moves to America with the family of his love, Ona, to make their way in a new world. Having lost most of their prospects in their country, they decide to try and make it in America, a land rumored to be full of opportunity; there Ona and Jurgis could finally get married. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that most of the opportunities in America were not granted to honest workers. The book tells the entirely tragic story of the family as it is brought to its knees and torn apart, all the while exposing the treacheries of the industries in Chicago, mainly the meat packing business.

I don't want to give away too many details, so I won't go into specifics about the story of all that befalls poor Jurgis, but I do want to talk about the end a little bit. No worries, it has little to do with the story line. In the end, he discovers socialism through a town meeting, and the last portion of the book is devoted to a discussion of socialism, and how it will be America's saving grace. Through other character's speeches and discussions we hear all the good arguments for socialism, and are left with the feeling that it will take over the country. Obviously, this didn't happen, so looking back on it historically is a bit odd - seeing that Sinclair's hope for the country never came true. Also, it is interesting to note that the book's main message was that of socialism, yet it's main impact came from it's description of the meat packing industry. He later said: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." This book caused quite the uproar and helped get a more thorough inspection of meat-packing practices throughout the country.

While I think Sinclair had a worthy goal of trying to promote his political ideas, I finished the book at a bit of a loss. We never really get a conclusion of Jurgis' story. While I'm not sure how the book should have been ended, and what should have happened to the characters, not discussing it at all didn't seem right. I understand that he wanted to leave it with an optimistic view of the rise of socialism, but in doing this he ignored the wonderful story he had built up over the last couple hundred pages.

At any rate, I think it's a book worth reading, especially for those of us who could use a better look into our history, and you get a great, albeit depressing story in the meantime.

So much has already been written about 'The Jungle' it's hard to write an original review without resorting to personal impressions which simply echo others - like so many cows in a Chicago stockyard, I've joined millions of other Americans in a rite of passage through Sinclair's Packingtown (I never sausage a thing). But original discussion can always be found by asking: is the novel still worth reading today? Clearly many teachers think so, it is widely assigned in the classroom, in particular at the high school level. I partly attribute this to the books relative ease of reading (I finished it in 2 days), but it comes at the expense of artistic quality - it is a journalistic novel with a lot of facts and not a lot of things we might come to expect in a great work of art: the characters are often not well developed, there is not the beautiful language and heavy use of symbolism, and it ends on a purely propaganda note. Sinclair is more interested in the novels message than the characters, ironic given the message: people are more important than the system.

It is still worth reading for its historical detail of working class life at the turn of the century; as a lover of history I reveled in all the tiny details, not only of the meat packing but the clothes, the food, the types of jobs, the types of things people bought, attitudes, mannerisms and expressions. These were people of my great-grandparents generation, who my grandparents were born into, so it still remains personally relevant and fascinating. Another novel about Chicago from this time period, Sister Carrie (1900) does as good a job in the historical detail, but is a stylistically much more mature work of art - and it broke new ground in allowing "fallen women" to rise up and succeed, a taboo of the age - Sinclair's fallen women are "correctly" killed off or given no hope of improvement.

Because of The Jungle's historical importance in raising awareness of social issues - similar to what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for equality laws and Oliver Twist did for the working poor of England - as a novel of social improvement it will probably remain popular among educators who want to show fiction as more than just entertaining stories. In summary, the novel is a classic because it is a mythological part of the American reading landscape, and for its effects on US health laws. It is not a classic in the artistic sense, but still worthwhile for the historical detail about America at the turn of century.

This is the book that drove Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act. It is more of a tale of immigrants finding their way than a description of the meatpacking industry. The plot follows a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkus, whose family falls apart as time progresses. His wife dies, his son drowns in a street, his immediate family is torn apart. Jurgis even becomes a cog in the graft machine. The tale may be a bit exaggerated; Jurgis is a combination of the experiences many immigrants at the time were having. The descriptions of the way meat was treated are disgusting. The only annoying part of the book was the last 1/4 or so basically being a socialist manifesto. It was moving given the character's condition.

This book was a requirement for a history class, but I ended up loving it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the human suffering involved during the upheaval of early immigration and unions.

This book will enlighten you to the harsh conditions that laborers in the United States worked under during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They're much worse than you think. This book will also make you communist, or socialist at the least.