The Jungle. Upton Sinclair

Sinclair's novel does accurately portray times and events that happened during this time period in the United States. To get this information Sinclair stayed in Chicago and investigated the issues for 7 weeks before writing the jungle. He was hired by a Newspaper to write the book. So the novel is accurate, but can be considered one sided because Sinclair's took a stance on some issues with the harsh working conditions at meat packing factories and also the cleanliness of the factories. The novel then starts talking about the corrupt politicians and the rising socialist party in Chicago, both real events. It puts the main character Jurgis (an immigrant) in the middle of all these events and really lets you get a feel for the times.

The first event Sinclair incorporated into his novel was immigration. Immigration was happening all over the United States and in each city it happened the same way. Most all immigrants where forced to have their whole families work bad low paying dangerous factories jobs to just afford a run down house in the slums of their city. They where mistreated and used by the factory bosses. Some examples of this in Sinclair's novel are when Ona starts not coming home from work and Jurgis soon find out she was forced to sleep with the loading foreman at her plant. The other example is when Jurgis hurts his ankle and after being away from work for 3 months his boss refuses to take him back leaving him jobless. Immigrants had a very hard time starting in America and in many cases where mistreated at work, and all of this is depicted in Sinclair's novel.

The next event Sinclair wrote about in his novel was the working conditions at the meat and fertilizer factories. He had the most detail about the meat packaging plant. From the killing beds to just traveling to work in the dead of winter, work was gruesome. Jobs where not secure at all and you where always at risk to have a bad accident or even die on the job. Cleanliness was also an issue brought up in the novel. The factories where dirty and the meat was very low grade. Unions where formed, but the companies had ways to prevent further strikes. To keep the conditions the same and to have all the workers still treated horribly the company just hired more workers so a strike would do no good because they would have a full workforce even if many left. There was no winning work was hell and it was all true, this was

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