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The Jungle (Norton Critical Editions)

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Did you ever want to read a book that revolutionized the food industries' laws, and at the same time reformed workers rights? Well then, The Jungle is the book for you. It is a wonderful tale about an immigrant family who just moved to Chicago, and shows their struggle in life just to survive in the miserable stockyards. Upton Sinclair, the author of this wonderful novel has a very unique style of writing that separates his book from all the others. His descriptive wrting and his use of symbolism make this story truely different. His overall mood is one of social protest, because the author wants changes in laws. The tone of Upton Sinclair is also very unique, he also tries to persuade you to his views on socialism and how bad some parts of the American government are. So, if you want to read book that will curdle your stomach and changes your views on equality, read The Jungle.

The Jungle is one of those books whose fame eclipses its reality. You probably learned about this one in sociology, history, biology, psychology, whatever class. Unfortunately, too few people have read it. You should. Not because it practically created the FDA either, but because it is a great story. However you want to classify the book - immigrant story, historical fiction, social realism, whatever else English teachers have done to deaden the fun - it's Jurgis' struggle to carve out a place for his family in the raw, brutal world of America that continues to fascinate. As a Chicagoan, I think this should be required reading for anyone who lives here - so many of the political and social conditions of the city and still connected to the systems of corporate and political cooperation that were established in the era of the novel. The ending is disappointing and definitely skip-able, but don't let that stop you from reading a great story.

I first read this book about 8 years ago in a High School history class. Since then I have read it twice and I did a college thesis on it; it is one of my favorite books. The first time I read the hardcover book; the next two times I listened to the unabridged audiobook and enjoyed it so much better.

Cicero once wrote, 'It is an outrageous abuse both of time and literature for a man to commit his thoughts to writing without having the ability either to arrange them or manifest them, or attract readers by some charm of style."

This book is a naturalistic novel with poor prose. Melodramatic and sensationalistic. It is functionally aligned to what was characterized as 'dime-novels' during the era in which it was written. The prose is so heinous it made me think the writer Mr. Sinclair must have been mentally exiguous. I had difficulty affirming in my own mind as I read this book that it was actually written by an adult, and not a fourteen-year-old child; notwithstanding a supposed professional novelist at that. Charles Dickens worked in a garment factory when he was a teenager as well as had a far less well-off beginning to life than that of Mr. Sinclair, yet Mr. Dickens could express with the most refined art and effort such an ease of pen dazzling the reader in every line. Dickens had indubitably an eye for detail and perfection that Sinclair's intellectual apathy could never aspire to grasp.

For a more eminent literary personification of the naturalistic novel genre, I would suggest reading Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. The naturalistic novel was always a phantasm of reality, but there were well-written ones and poorly written ones; this one by Upton Sinclair is a literary peril to say the least.

This book is exceptional only its ridiculousness. The characters are passive, dull, cliché, and often utterly puerile in their own conceptualization of their circumstances (this reflects upon the limited thought process of the writer).

In respect to the vulgarity discussed by Sinclair regarding the food industry of this era it should be noted the industry had already been exposed by various NON-fiction writers of the period (preceding Sinclair), and much (the emphasis being much, not all) of the industry had consequently been reformed apropos to the processing of food by the time this book was published. Essentially the government mandated regulatory reforms that were instituted the following year as a result of the popularity of this book were unnecessary, most significantly postulated on aberrational phenomena, and were superficial in remonstrance (oh but they made the public feel good inside). Conversely had Sinclair decided to be objective in his critique of the meatpacking industry in contrast to producing 'muckracking' so-called journalism derived out of his own subjective views in support of socialist ideology he would have discovered the previously mentioned actuality, but since this is a work of fiction he could write anything he wished, and he did. Why Sinclair went down the road of sensationalism in this novel may be attributable to the failures of his first four books. However, because he decided to go down that road he cannot be taken seriously as a scholar in any regard.

It should be noted that Sinclair was not merely a metaphorical socialist, he was a literal one (he was an unsuccessful Socialist Party candidate in the U.S.). In historical context Sinclair's political persuasion was during an era when the progressive political faction was gaining in popularity in America, so as a socialist ideologue he [Sinclair] was even further to the left politically than the progressives (he could be paralleled with a Michael Moore type in the present-era).

This book is a literary work of fiction, and should not be taken earnestly as a non-fictional scholarly critique. With that noted it also falls short in regard to literary style, and because the characters are passively portrayed by Sinclair in contrast to being actively portrayed it is difficult for the reader to form any authentic connection with them (they exist more as abstractions).