The Jungle – Background Information – Flashcards

Upton Sinclair

1906

1. elicit sympathy for the working class and build support for the Socialist movement. 2. portray the lives of immigrants in the US 3. expose the bad practices and corruption of the meat-packing industry

Early 1900s, Chicago stockyards. "Packingtown"

Social criticism, political fiction, muckraking fiction

Lithuanian immigrants

1. poverty and illiteracy of new arrivals 2. Eastern European culture 3. devoted to Roman Catholicism

1. poverty 2. absence of social programs 3. unpleasant living/working conditions 4. hopelessness amongst the working class

the victimized working class is righteous, and the oppressing capitalists are evil

Jurgis Rudkus

3rd Person Omniscient

Looking at/gathering information about the depressing, dirty, and sometimes scandalous parts of society.

Concerned with Social issues and environmental influence on characters (naturalism)

Centers around the working class

Sinclair promotes Socialism in The Jungle

public outcry over the novel's portrayal of the meat industry's practice of selling rotten and diseased meat to unsuspecting customers.

passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act, signed by Teddy Roosevelt

1. Evils of Capitalism 2. Immigrant experience 3. Hollowness of the American Dream

1. Packingtown and the stockyards - represent the plight of the working class (Just as the animals at Packingtown are herded into pens, killed with impunity, made to suffer, and given no choice about their fate, so too are the thousands of poor immigrant workers forced to enter the machinery of capitalism, which grinds them down and kills them without giving them any choice.) 2. cans of rotten meat - represent the essential corruption of capitalism and the hypocrisy of the American Dream. (The cans have shiny, attractive surfaces but contain a mass of putrid meat unfit for human consumption. In the same way, American capitalism presents an attractive face to immigrants, but the America that they find is rotten and corrupt) 3. The Jungle - the title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism (the world of Packingtown is like a Darwinian jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are engaged in a brutal, amoral fight for survival

1. the grim setting of Packingtown foreshadows the family's eventual destruction 2. the conversation with Grandmother Majauszkiene about the housing swindle foreshadows their eviction 3. Jurgis's experiences with vote-buying and crime early in the novel foreshadow his later participation in similar schemes

Jurgis and his family pursue the American Dream, but poor wages and the oppression of capitalism shatter every aspect of their lives.

Phil Connor's rape of Ona; Jurgis's having to spend Christmas in jail away from his family; Ona's death during childbirth

Upon hearing of Antanas's death, in Chapter 21, Jurgis loses all hope and feels destroyed by capitalism.

Jurgis's abandonment of his family and turn to dishonest means to survive; Marija's turn to prostitution