The Jungle :: essays research papers

The Jungle, due to the federal legislation it provoked, became one of the mostimpressionist books of the twentieth century. Americans were horrified to learn aboutthe terrible sanitation low which their internality products were packed. They were even morehorrified to learn that the labels listing the ingredients in canned nitty-gritty products wereblatant fabrications. The revelation that rotten and diseased meat was sold without a singleconsideration for public health anger American citizens. They consumed meatcontaining the ground remains of poisoned rats and sometimes unfortunate workers who fly into the machinery for grinding meat and producing lard. Within months of TheJungles publication, the sale of meat products dropped dramatically. The public birdcall ofindignation led to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. However, Sinclair did not write The Jungle to incite the American g everyplacenmentinto regulating the sanitation of the meat packing industry. The d etails regarding theunsanitary and disgusting conditions in meat packing factories are background details of amuch larger picture. The Jungle was written in order to provoke violate over themiserable working conditions of industrial wage labor. He detailed the privation of sanitation inthe factories in order to provoke sympathy and outrage for the impoverished factoryworkers. The germs and disease inside the meat packing establishments were and so apublic health concern, but it was far more of a concern for the workers. He also portraysthe various sicknesses they suffer as a result of their working environments.The Jungle is also an appeal to Socialism. He follows Jurgiss Lithuanianimmigrant family into the disgusting tenements and meat packing factories of Chicago.There, they suffer the loss of all their dreams of supremacy and freedom in America. Theyfind themselves leashed to the grinding poverty and misery of the urban center slums despite alltheir best efforts. Sinclairs purposes for writing the novel included displaying the evils ofcapitalist economy as an economic system. Jurgis suffers misfortune after misfortune, and he joins the union solo to see theunion fail to improve working conditions. His wife and youngster die in rapid succession. Hebecomes a wandering tramp, the victim of the casual cruelty of those better off than he.Finally, he joins the Chicago vile underworld where money comes easily to him for thefirst time since his arrival in America. However, that fails to save him as well. He returnsto the remnants of his family only to discover that Marija has become a prostitute. Anothermember of the family, Stanislovas, is dead, having been eaten alive by a swarm of rats in