User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Naturally, my high school English teacher felt it necessary to assign "The Jungle" to read over Thanksgiving break. As my Dad carved the turkey, the conversation went something like this:
MOM: Could you pass the turkey?
ME: Oh, yeah, great, why don't we pass the meat that untold numbers of Slavik immigrants had to die to process? Why don't we just spit in the face of the proleteriat and laugh, knowing that he's too malnourished to fight back.
DAD: Are you okay?
ME: Oh, sure, I'm great. And you know why? Because my comfort is based on an oligarchic pyramid, where we feast while others starve. Thanks-Giving? Who are we thanking? The Taiwanese sweatshop worker who wove the plastic netting that enwrapped our raw turkey? I'll be we're not. I'll be we haven't given HIM a second thought.
MOM: So, no turkey, then?
I'm not sure which was worse: My Socialist diatribes or bookending the most succulent turkey of my life with readings about men kicking rats off their bleeding feet and falling into vats of grease. Thanks, Ms. Doe.
Rating: really liked it
Whenever I've asked someone if they have read The Jungle, and if they have not read it, they always respond, "isn't that about the meat packing industry?". I think that response is exactly what the author was trying to point out is wrong with his society at the time.
It is true that the main character of the book at one point goes to work in a meat packing plant, and its disgusting, and when the book was published apparently the FDA was created as a result, or something. The problem is, though, that this book is not about the meat packing industry- the book is about the plight of a poor immigrant family in Chicago, and about the plight of poor people in the country in general at that time. Sinclair is trying to bring light to the disgusting ways in which people in his time were forced to live, the way they were manipulated, ripped off, neglected and sometime even killed by the very community that profited from their cheap labor. Its an incredible book, and if you read it keep in mind that the atrocities that really occur in this book surround the way that these people were held down no matter what they did. I think that Upton Sinclair would be saddened to know, and maybe he did know, that the only thing that changed as a result of this beautifully written pro-socialist novel is that the middle class now has healthy meat products.
Rating: really liked it
The jungle, Upton SinclairThe Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968).
Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities.
His primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States.
The Jungle tells the story of Jurgis Rudus, a young immigrant who came to the New World to find a better life.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال1978میلادی
عنوان: جنگل؛ نویسنده: آپتن سینکلر؛ مترجم: ابوتراب باقرزاده؛ تهران، ؟، ؟، در چهارده و417ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، روزبهان، سال1357، در چهارده و417ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: جنگل؛ نویسنده: آپتن سینکلر؛ مترجم: مینا سرابی؛ تهران، ؟، ؟، در331ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، علم، سال1357، در331ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، دنیای نو، سال1380، در329ص؛ شابک9649047212؛
نیاکان ادبی «آپتن سینکلر»، بیشمار هستند، آنان سنت دیرینه ای در ادبیات پایه نهاده اند، عمدتا شرایط زندگی طبقه کارگر، و انگیزه های جنبشهای آن طبقه را، مورد بررسی قرار میدهند، نخستین نمونه در «آمریکا» کتاب «کلبه ی عمو توم»، اثر «هریت بیچر استو» بود، و دیگری کتاب «شمال و جنوب» اثر «الیزابت گاسکل»، و ...؛
سینکلر، این رمان را، برای نشان دادن شرایط خشن، و زندگی مهاجران نوشتند، شرایطی که در «شیکاگو»، و دیگر شهرهای صنعتی همانند «شیگاگو» بودند؛ هدف ایشان از نگارش، در «بازنمایی اوضاع صنعت گوشت»، و «شرایط کاری آن روزها»، در «ایالات متحده» بود؛ با خوانش این رمان، بیشتر مردمان، از همگی «نارسائیهای بهداشتی در صنایع بسته بندی گوشت»، در آمریکای سالهای نخست، از سده بیستم میلادی، آگاه شدند، که به تظاهرات عمومی کشید، و به اصلاحاتی، از جمله «قانون بازرسی گوشت»، منجر شد؛ این کتاب «فقر طبقه کارگر»، «نبود حمایت اجتماعی»، «زندگی سخت و ناخوشایند» و «شرایط کاری و ناامیدی»، در میان بسیاری از کارگران آن روزگاران را بازگو میکند؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 05/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 20/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
Reading
The Jungle will have you wringing your fists Upton Sinclair style.
Right up until I read it,
The Jungle was one of those books I'd always heard of, but not heard about. I knew it was important, apparently, because everyone said so, but no one said why. (I guess I should have asked.) From what I gathered, it had something to do with the meat industry and its nefarious doings in the early 20th century, which led me to expect a dry, straight-forward, tell-all non-fiction revealing corruption, worker neglect, health violations, unsafe food preparation, and other important but not very exciting topics. That's probably why it took me about 20 years longer to get around to it than it should have.
Finally I read it. I was right. It did include all those topics, but it was fiction, and it was epic.
The Jungle is a story of immigrants coming to America to improve their lot in life and running headlong into the Chicago meat industry, which had very little interest in improving anyone's lot in life but the company owners and share holders. The lower you were down on the corporate food chain, the less the industry cared about you, and that includes the consumer, that unwitting public being fed a product almost completely devoid of nutrition.
Granted, Sinclair had an agenda - reveal industry corruption - and he sugarcoated it in a captivating story to entice the unwashed masses to give it a read. Not only do I not have a problem with that, I'm not embarrassed to say it's one of my favorite methods of swallowing these dry pills. I popped this one in my mouth and it went down smoother than expected. Then it made me sick to my stomach, but in the end I'm better off for having taken it.
Rating: really liked it
‘
I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.’
-Upton Sinclair
The Jungle is best known as the novel that led to the Meat Inspection Act and partially to the creation of the FDA after much public outcry against the unsanitary conditions of food processing and packaging. However, this was not the aim of the book and the unsanitary food was but a mere detail in a novel written to expose the horrific conditions of the working class, from unsafe conditions at work, corrupt factory owners, exploitation of children, fixing votes, blacklists, and especially predatory housing that got rich off the suffering of others. Especially immigrants. That this is all glossed over says quite a bit about society (yes, food safety
is important too, though), and even Upton Sinclair himself said his rise to celebrity over the book was ‘
not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.’ Written after spending weeks working in meat packing plants in Chicago to gather information and write about the lives of the people working there, Sinclair crafter this story of Jurgis and Ona who have come to the US hoping to pursue the mythological American Dream only to have their hopes dashed and dreams shattered at every turn as they find themselves mere pawns for the wealthy to have their lives burned up for the sake of profit.
‘
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.’
President Teddy Roosevelt called the book ‘
hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful,’ and the Bureau of Animal Industry rejected Sinclairs claims of unhygienic practices, saying the novel was ‘
willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact,’ which is comically inept of them seeing as it
was published as a novel and not non-fiction. However, the public outcry did lead to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which is great and prove that literature can certainly spark outrage that leads to change, though it is a shame it didn’t also spark outrage towards improving conditions for the working class.
‘
The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.’
As a novel itself, it is certainly rage inducing though not necessarily one that is the most enjoyable to read in terms of literary quality. I mean, sure, its great, but Sinclair is definitely more a journalist than a novelist. To be fair, the point was to spark outrage not write ‘fine literary works,’ and he did what he set out to do. The book has an agenda and it does it well. The ending uses socialism as sort of a deus ex machina, which, whatever I’m into it, but it isn’t
not heavy handed. The big problem, though, is there are some rather racist tropes used at the end, hoping to get white readers upset over Black workers mingling with white country girls, and using some really problematic characterizations. Most of the scab workers are said to be Black and described using racist stereotypes. So that is not great. But the novel does capture how awful conditions were and how people got trapped in this. It also definitely gives you the overwhelming sense of futility that broke people’s spirits, feeling as if ‘
she was standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.’
If you are interested in this story and the main points, there is actually a really wonderful graphic novel adaptation, The Jungle by Kristina Gehrmann, that is well worth reading. It’s a decent novel though and certainly a piece of history, and part of the frustration is seeing how many of these issues still cast a shadow over life today.
3.5/5
Rating: really liked it
Every day in New York they slaughter
four million ducks
five million pigs
and two thousand doves for the pleasure of the dying,
a million cows
a million lambs
and two million roosters,
that leave the sky in splinters.
—Federico García Lorca
I expected to dislike this book, because it is a book aimed at provoking outrage. Outrage is a species of anger, and, like all species of anger, it can feel oddly pleasurable. True, anger always contains dissatisfaction of some kind; but anger can also be an enormously enlivening feeling—the feeling that we are infinitely right and our opponents infinitely wrong. Outrage joins with this moral superiority a certain smugness, since we feel outrage on behalf of others, about things that do not affect us personally, and so we can feel satisfied that
we would never do something so egregious. Judging from how ephemeral public outrage tends to be, and how infrequently it leads to action, outrage can be, and often is, engaged in for its own sake—as a periodic reminder to ourselves that we are not villains, since villains couldn’t feel so angry at injustice inflicted on so distant a party.
In a way, the history of this book justifies my suspicion. Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks working in the meatpacking industry in Chicago, and wrote a muckraking novel about the experience. An avowed and proud socialist, his aim was to raise public awareness of the terrible conditions of the working poor—to write the "
Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery,” as Jack London called the book. The book did cause a lot of outrage, but not for the intended reasons. The public interpreted the book as an exposé on the unsanitary conditions in the meat factories; and the legislation that resulted was purely to remedy this problem. As Sinclair himself said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” This is one of those ironies of history that make you want to laugh or cry: a book aimed to publicize the plight of the working poor made an impact solely in the way that working conditions affected the middle class.
About halfway through, I had decided that this was a brilliant piece of journalism and a mediocre novel. But the second half made me revise my opinion: it is a surprisingly decent novel, too. This is impressive, since fiction is not Sinclair’s strength. His characters are, for the most part, one-dimensional and static; in this book they serve as mere loci of pity. Furthermore, they never really come alive, since Sinclair writes almost no dialogue. In the first half, when the protagonists are at work in the yards, the plot is drearily predicable: things go from bad to worse; and, as Shakespeare reminds us, every time you tell yourself “This is the worst,” there is worse yet still to come. But after Jurgis, our hero, finally leaves the meat factories, the novel really comes alive. Things still go from bad to worse, for the most part, but there are some surprising reversals and exciting adventures.
In any case, this book is primarily a work of journalism, and on that level it is absolutely successful. Sinclair is an expert writer. He deploys language with extreme precision; his descriptions are vivid and exact. And what he describes is unforgettable. His portrayal of grinding poverty, and the desperation and despair it drives people to, is almost Dostoyevskyan in its gruesomeness. And unlike that Russian author, Sinclair is very clear that the problem is systematic and social—how decent and hardworking people can fall into an economic trap with no options and no escape. He shows how and why the working poor are free only in theory, how and why the oppressed and exploited are virtually owned by their bosses. And it must be said that his descriptions of factory processes are viscerally disgusting—so disgusting that they do distract a little from Sinclair’s message. The meat factory is the book’s central metaphor: a giant slaughterhouse where hapless animals are herded and butchered. As becomes painfully clear by the end of the book, the working poor are hardly in a better situation than the pigs.
By the end, Sinclair succeeds in producing that rare sensation: reasoned outrage. For there are, of course, situations in which outrage is the only logical response—monstrous injustice and inhuman cruelty—and the working and living conditions in the meatpacking district was one of them. Sinclair succeeds in this by relating facts instead of preaching. (Well, he does some preaching at the end, but it is forgivable.) He does not sentimentalize his characters or exaggerate their nobility; they are ordinary and flawed people. He does not use mawkish or cloying language; his narrative voice is pitiless and cold, like the world he describes. This book is a testament to the positive potential of outrage. The world needs more muckrakers.
Rating: really liked it
(written 6-03)
Wow. Now I can see why this book had such a big impression on those who read it in the early twentieth century. Really heart-wrenching (and gut-wrenching) stuff. There's the famous quote that Sinclair said he aimed for the public's heart and hit it in the stomach instead. I guess people didn't care much for the Socialism stuff, but when they learned what exactly their sausage was made of, they got mad.
It was surprising how much Sinclair reminds me of Ayn Rand, especially considering their completely opposite views on capitalism. They both use a fictional human situation to show the evils of society from an individual's point of view, and
The Jungle and
Atlas Shrugged both ended with a lengthy philosophical statement that was thinly veiled as a speech by the characters. I guess the difference is, Rand didn't know when to quit, and tried to actually make her utopia become a reality in the book. Sinclair left it as a call-to-arms. I liked Rand's ideas in print, but, as seen in
The Jungle and in
Fast Food Nation, corporations can't be trusted to make good decisions. Not every business owner is a Howard Roark or a John Galt. And efficiency can sometimes come at a high human price. Profits don't equal success, and the market, self-sufficient as it may seem, needs regulation.
The situation has come a long way in the past century, with minimum wages, enforced child labor laws, anti-trust laws, worker's compensation, and more. But Eric Schlosser showed us that the meatpacking industry is
still cheating its workers,
still the most dangerous place to work, and
still trying to avoid regulations at all costs, with injuries going unreported and meat going uninspected. I'm glad to finally have read this book... now when I talk about it I really know what I am talking about.
Rating: really liked it
It's been a while since I read it, but I believe this book features a precocious young boy named Mowgli Rudkus who was raised by wolves. After singing a bunch of songs with bears and orangutans in the jungles of India, Mowgli immigrates to turn-of-the-century Chicago where he lives in abject poverty until he falls into an industrial meat grinder and becomes a hamburger. He is later served to Theodore Roosevelt for Thanksgiving dinner, 1906.
This book also has the distinction of changing America's political and social attitudes towards both the meat packing industry and the villainous Shere Khan. Legislation against Shere Khan continues to this day.
Someone might want to fact check this review on Wikipedia or something.
Rating: really liked it
Hey, do you want to see some poor schlub get totally wrecked by "the man", be grossed out by the meat industry, and learn about socialism?
Then, this is the book for you!
I had to read it for school and hated every minute of it. I was literally nauseous at times, and depressed the rest.
Yes, it's a classic, but unless you are required to read it, like I was, don't go here. There is nothing but horror and sadness.
One pic to explain the book:
Rating: really liked it
I have a tendency to be easily swayed by arguments, so I asked a well-read friend for an antidote to Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED. She suggested this book. If I ever get that wish where you get to resurrect people and have them at a dinner party, I'm going to have Ayn Rand and Upton Sinclair there together. That would be an awesome cage-fight between the philosophers.
This book has an actual story with actual sympathetic characters. Well, they start out being sympathetic. Jurgis and Ona are a young couple in love, recently immigrated from Lithuania. They've come to Chicago to make their forturne, only to find that life in the packing houses is not much better than slavery. No matter how hard they work, they are only one brief breath away from starvation.
At first, I was rooting for them, hoping to get to the point where their luck turned and they finally started to make good. Alas, at some point, it became apparent that this wasn't Sinclair's plan. Bad luck plagues them. Pretty soon, children and innocent women are dropping like flies, and I had to disengage because I didn't really want to identify with people who were doomed to die a horrible, horrible death.
There's not a lot of subtlety in this book, and as a reader I felt myself looking for the path that Sinclair was trying to lead us on. I knew the history of this novel, what he had intended (to have labor reform) and what he got (food safety reform). But I couldn't help but wonder if the moral was "life will get better once you rid yourself of your family."
The novel is plotted poorly. It lacks a narrative arc that culminates in a satisfactory ending. One expects a plot to have a certain path. Things get worse, and worse, and worse, then there's a climax, then there's a resolution, then there's a denoument. I don't notice as a reader how much I rely on this until something like this comes along where its absence jars me. Jurgis' life and his family get worse and worse, and worse, and worse, then they get better, then they get worse,then they get better, then they get kind of worse, but not as bad as they were at the beginning, and then a bunch of unrelated things happen, and then he meets the socialists and everything is sunshine and roses.
The reader is supposed to be blown away by the triumphant rational truth of the socialist proselytizer, just as Jurgis is. But because I've actually read history, I read it instead with a kind of amused pity, like when a tone-deaf ugly kid says "I'm going to be a famous singer someday!" Oh honey, you think socialism will fix everything. Bless your heart, you're so cute.
Sinclair correctly points out that wage slavery creates a huge burgeoning underclass, that it's both unjust and inhuman when those with money buy power so they can exploit people so they can gain even more power. While his proposed solution would solve the ills of early 20th century Chicago about as well as mercury sulfide cures toothaches, these are valid points. They make me grateful for OSHA regulations and minimum wage laws.
The most amusing part of this novel is that when this book came out, no one really cared that much about the poor people. All they cared about was that their meat was disgusting. Apparently 20th century Americans don't care if poor immigrants die, they just don't want to have to eat the corpses. It reminds me of that scene in "The Simpsons" where Bart goes to France and is held prisoner and mistreated by his "host" family. When he escapes to the police and recites a litany of his travails, the only fact the gendarme fixes on is "they put antifreeze in the wine?"
The other amusing part of this novel was that I read it so soon after reading ATLAS SHRUGGED. I don't think Rand ever read this novel, though she could have. I wonder what she would have thought of it? Because ATLAS SHRUGGED is basically a diatribe with cardboard characters that espouses how Socialism (Communism) is horrible, and the only solution to a happy nation is unbridled capitalism. THE JUNGLE is basically a diatribe with cardboard characters that espouses how unbridled capitalism is horrible, and how the only solution to a happy nation is Socialism (Communism). He didn't really live long enough to see the full extent of that little experiment. What would he have thought about it? I'll grant Sinclair a little more leeway for his naivite, since he was born too early to see Soviet Communist handiwork.
Like ATLAS SHRUGGED, THE JUNGLE is an important book, a monumental book, in terms of its influence, but it's not really a well-written book. I recommend it to people who like to learn about early twentieth-century America.
Rating: really liked it
“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.” ― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
One of the great social/protest novels of the 20th Century. 'The Jungle' is at once an indictment on the treatment of immigrants, poverty, American wage slavery, and the working conditions at Chicago's stockyards and meatpacking plants -- and simultaneously an exposé on the unsanitary conditions of the meat produced in the plants and led to Federal real food reform. Did I like it? Well, it pissed me off, so I thought it was a great piece of writing. It reminded me of the time when I was 19 and lived next to the Swift stockyards and meat packing plants. The smells that seemed more terrestrial than dirt seemed to flood back into my brain. 'The Jungle' shows how persuasive fiction can actually lead to real world reform. The FDA was created largely due to the public outcry after the publication of this book.
Jack London said in his review at the time, that the Jungle was the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery. The interesting fact, however, is Sinclair was more concerned about the people, the exploitation of immigrants and children, but the power of this novel ended up being tied to the condition of the food, and not the people. Sinclair was quoted as saying "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Regardless, Upton Sinclair throws a helluva punch.
Rating: really liked it
A book that changed laws in America...should be required reading for anyone working towards an MBA. This book truly made a positive change for everyone; the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. The 1906 Act was passed in response to the public anger over the conditions in the Chicago stockyards that were described in this book. This later lead to the formation of the FDA.
Rating: really liked it
if i had the words to describe the horror of reading this book, i'd certainly find a way to put them here. this was a physically challenging read, as it took an epic energy even to continue. All the terrors you've ever heard about what you might find in its pages are absolutely true. the weight of it is oppressive. it stinks with the filth of early america, it aches with excruciating poverty and unrelenting suffering, and it drips an inhuman avarice summoned from the darkest reaches of a roiling hell that most of us refuse to acknowledge ever played a part in our history or the present capitalist mirage we live in now.
but with that out of the way, i think i really liked it.
i determined to read it based on the fact that it's a book we "talk" a lot about. we discussed in in high school and in college, and most people are familiar enough with its subject to make allusions to it over big macs at mcdonalds (what are we eating in there, anyway?). but i can't think of anyone i know that has actually read it (with the exception, now, of bennion who lent me his copy). i thought i could endure the torment of the story if only for the right to say i'd done it. like watching david lynch's "eraserhead." but, i was happy to find that it was alarmingly fulfilling and i'll always be glad i stuck it out.
its trajectory is long and slow, demanding a total commitment of the reader. because to quit on the killing beds (and the first 3/4 of the book feel like the killing beds) you would leave it as gutted and hollow as the cattle slaughtered thereon. but with the proper fight, and a healthy dose of "count your many blessings," the reward is rich and it fills the resulting void with an enlightened, even sweet-smelling righteous indignation. the kind that makes you feel good. like you've come out the other side of a battle, drenched in blood, but totally alive. more so, maybe, than when you went in.
i'd heartily recommend this book to anyone with the stomach and the will to endure. i'd say it is essential to the american experience. it's a rotten picture, however, and not for anyone who doesn't want to take off the star-spangled glasses and confront the ugly past. but there's a lot more here than an expository piece of reportage from a century behind us. a bloody lot more.
Rating: really liked it
Introduction, by Ronald Gottesman
Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Text--The Jungle
Rating: really liked it
The story of a Lithuanian family that came to The US at the beginning of the twentieth century to start a new life. What they experience is not America’s dream but its nightmare, with conditions that resemble a slavery and a poverty that is inescapable. Powerful, and yet it seems too easy to say how terrible that was and how bad those days were, without recognizing that it has relevance to what is happening today. Good read that one hopes goes beyond just being read.
