The Jungle

This is an astonishing book. One of the more astonishing things about it is that it was written 112 years ago. Many of the same things destroying America today, albeit in different areas today than in the meat packing industry of 1906, were already very much alive (and, unfortunately well) then. Sinclair's hope of changing the political thinking of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century did little more than encourage the passage of legislation protecting the food consumption of the Americans of his day. As he wrote himself, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident hit its stomach." Sadly, in spite of that moderate success, his socialist dream is no closer to becoming reality today than it was then. Nevertheless, show more Sinclair's hero, Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, would be proud to know that there are still people willing to fight for those ideals today, however hopeless it might seem in America at the beginning of the 21st century. show less

This book is widely considered a classic, and with good reason. Sinclair follows the fate of Jurgis and his extended Lithuanian family as they try to make a decent living in the Packingtown district of Chicago. They’re swindled in every sphere, and the innocent suffer the most. The book exposes the abysmal working conditions that the men in the meat-packing plants faced and the extent of the political corruption designed to keep businessmen happy and the general electorate downtrodden. It’s vividly written and feels relevant today, too, unfortunately.

I’m rating this a 3.5 because the content is a 4, but the book just kind of stops.

Jurgis Rudkus and his family emigrate from Lithuania to the United States because they live a very hard life and were told the wages are much higher here. What they were not told is that costs are also much higher, so the family ends up typical of the poorest of the poor. After having most of their money swindled in New York, they make it to Chicago to live in a single room in a fetid boarding house, from which all the family members can get jobs. With several incomes they make the smart choice to buy a house in the slaughterhouse district, the only place they can afford to live and work. This proves to be another swindle, as the house is falling apart, their interest is high, and if they fail to make a single payment they will be show more evicted. Their jobs in the slaughterhouses are incredibly difficult and dangerous. Men have life-threatening accidents every day, and the meat is rotting and full of toxic chemicals. The workers get sick with tuberculosis and other contagious disease often, but can’t afford to take time off, even unpaid, as they will lose their job. Family members die or go missing. Jurgis ends up in prison for beating a man who raped his wife, and when he gets out his wife dies in childbirth, the family is evicted, and his other child dies. Jurgis leaves them and becomes a tramp and then a thief. He becomes a vote fixer for the Republican Party, then the Democratic Party, and then a strikebreaker for the very union he used to belong to. After another stint in prison he returns to his two remaining family members, his wife’s stepmother and cousin, to find the latter has been trafficked into prostitution. One day, when looking for a warm place to loiter, Jurgis hears a speech by a great socialist orator. The words he hears reflect Jurgis’ lived experience, unlike any politics he's heard before, and offer him hope for the future and something to fight for. After the speech, Jurgis meets the speaker, who offers him a job as a porter at a hotel run by a socialist, where he thrives.

I had not ever read this classic before, and I'm very glad that I did. The descriptions of work at the slaughterhouse that are so famous are only in about a third of the book (the first third, which makes me wonder if some readers only get that far). Overall, the book is about the plight of immigrants, the poor who work so hard for nothing, and the lie of the American Dream. Jurgis and his family frequently lament that there's no such thing as freedom if you can't afford it, and they would not have been fundamentally worse off if they had stayed in Lithuania.
After the horrible things he's been through, socialism is a light at the end of the tunnel for Jurgis. He doesn't find utopia, he just finds a system that acknowledges him and cares about people like him and gives him something to look forward to. The ending is bittersweet from a modern perspective, as the socialists are so optimistic but the reader knows what will actually happen to the reputation of socialism over the next 115 years. The book does go a bit too far in trying to overexplain the nickels and dimes of how much different people will get paid for different tasks under socialism. Quit while you're ahead!
Cynics like to point out that the only change this book catalyzed when it was published was food safety, not socialism or worker welfare or a social safety net, but that's absolutely not nothing. The upper class aren't eating the rotten tubercular pork or the beef sausage full of rats and workers’ body parts - the workers and the poor themselves are. Food safety improvements help them most.
I often find that “classics” don't hold up as well as people claim they do, but this book is great and I'm so glad I finally read it. show less

It is impossible for me to review this without appearing to be pissy. The work itself is barely literary. The Jungle explores and illustrates the conditions of the meatpacking industry. Its presence stirred outcry which led to much needed reforms. Despite the heroics of tackling the Beef Trust, Upton Sinclair saw little need in the actual artful. The protagonist exists only to conjoin the various pieces of reportage. There isn't much emotional depth afforded, the characters' motivations often appear skeptical. I was left shaking my head on many a turn, especially towards the end where entire speeches from the American Socialist party compete with esoteric findings of left-leaning social scientists from the era (around 1905).

Despite show more these shortcomings as a novel, the opening half is often harrowing. Graphic descriptions of hellish work conditions, poor food quality and lack of social safety net reached towards a very personal conclusion: I am EVER so grateful that I didn't live 110 years ago and was forced to compete economically under those conditions. show less

This work is strongest as it describes the absolute torture that faced many immigrants to the United States in the days before labor and health were regulated. Jurgis Rudkus leaves a poor, but idyllic life in Lithuania to chase dreams of riches in the stockyards of Chicago. Sinclair does an absolutely masterful job in the first half of the book depicting the miserable working conditions resulting from the greed and corruption endemic to American business in this era. I've read that the book resulted in a massive decline in meat consumption, and it's easy to see why now that I've read it. Unfortunately, the book is marred by the second half, which is really just a political recruitment vehicle for Socialism. The writing is duller, and show more the reader can't help but feel manipulated by what started out as a fascinating snapshot of an unattractive period in US history. show less

Intense. Had to have a drink on hand whenever reading this to stomach the misery and greed. A Lithuanian family, hoping for a life less oppressed, immigrates to America and finds their way to Chicago's stockyards at the turn of the last century only to be cruelly tricked into indentured servitude in the meat packing industry. Their daily struggle to counter starvation, sickness, exhaustion, and homelessness is heartrending. The reader experiences the foul and brutal practices of the meat industry; the utter lack of a social safety net for anyone or basic infrastructure in the workingman's neighborhoods; the corruption of the industries, the city officials, and the political machine - and their collusion; the extensive world of crime, show more gambling, and prostitution (women habitually held hostage and doped); and the tenuous hope of relief through union organization and the socialist revolution. Sickening to think that these situations and conditions still exist in the world. Come the fuck on humanity. show less

It's ironic that Sinclair's intention in writing "The Jungle", dedicated "To the Workingmen of America", was to shine a light on the difficult conditions of the proletarian and advance the cause of socialism. However, what really shocked Americans was not the oppression their fellow man was suffering to put meat on their plates, but what might be IN the meat on their plates. For as Jane Jacobs says in the introduction, this meant "telling about the revolting ingredients packed into America's breakfast sausages and pickled meats: flesh from tubercular cattle and hogs with cholera, floor sweepings, hapless rats, and unsalubrious chemicals to render the results cosmetically acceptable."

Yum.

It's certainly an important book, caused an uproar show more when it was published in 1906, and led to meat-packing regulations, but as fiction it's mediocre.

Quotes:
On marriage:
"Marriage and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man's exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own terms: equality, a life-contract, and the legitimacy - that is, the property rights - of her children. If she had no money, she was a proletarian, and sold herself for an existence."

On religion:
"Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The workingman was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience, - in short to al the pseudo-virtues of capitalism."

"I have no doubt that in a hundred years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed Socialism, just as at present it denies that it ever tortured Galileo." show less