“Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. The first of these places is early on in the story on page 41 where Jurgis is witnessing the slaughtering of the hogs. To begin, an emphasis on actual animals begins on page 39, where it is being explained, regarding industry, how “They brought in ten thousand head of cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep.” Animals are then prevalent throughout the rest of the novel, and human beings are reflected as being treated similar to these animals later on in the story. The novel's unstable mixture of documentary naturalism and political polemic continues to trouble even those readers sympathetic to its Socialist politics.Numerous symbols are used in Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. Sinclair himself recognized this fact, famously lamenting that he had aimed at the public's heart but hit it in its stomach. His publisher's marketing campaign, however, emphasized the novel's alarms over the safety of the nation's meat supply while ignoring its critique of industrial capitalism. Many readers have found this resolution contrived, but it is integral to Sinclair's larger purpose: working-class liberation. After the death of his wife and son, Jurgis quits the slaughterhouse and works at a variety of jobs, from strikebreaker to thief, discovering firsthand how democratic ideals have been betrayed by a citywide system of graft and corruption.Īfter Jurgis has lost everything-his family, his health, his hope-he discovers and converts to socialism. Jurgis Rudkus and his bride Ona are crushed by a series of blows that suggest parallels between the treatment of the livestock and the workers employed to process them. Immigrant family whose dream of success turns to a nightmare on the “killing floors” of the Chicago packinghouses.

Had sold more than 100,000 copies, and its revelations about contamination in the packing plants speeded passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act.ĭedicated to “the Workingmen of America,” Within a year of its publication in book form Plants so he could view conditions firsthand. Officials, health inspectors, and the workers themselves, who smuggled him into

Researching the book in 1904, Upton Sinclair interviewed fellow America's most influential proletarian novel, emerged from a seven-week investigation of Chicago's slaughterhouses.

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