Book #10: The Jungle

Book #10: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

January 25, 2013


This is another book that I had previously attempted to read. I first picked up The Jungle in the 9th grade. See, the book had been mentioned in my history class, because we were studying that time period or something, and I was curious about the gruesome working conditions that were described in the book. I found the book on my English teacher's shelf, and flipped through until I found what I was looking for. And I must say, Sinclair's descriptions of the conditions in these Chicago stockyard slaughterhouses and meat-packing warehouses are quite disturbing. I felt sick to my stomach, and I put the book back on the shelf. 10 years later, I finally picked it up again and read the whole thing.

The descriptions were still difficult to read, but I was into the story enough to push through it. The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, is a Lithuanian immigrant. He comes to the United States, and to Chicago, with his elderly father, his young bride-to-be Ona, and her brother, cousin, widowed-stepmother, and multiple half-siblings. Jurgis has heard the same tales about life in America that led so many other immigrants here in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jurgis is optimistic; he's a strong young man, and he believes that in this land of opportunity, he'll be able to work hard enough to give his family a good life.

Almost right off, the naive and ignorant family is taken advantage of, and they arrive in Chicago with very little money to their names. They find that the famous stockyards are a disgusting dump (quite literally), yet Jurgis marvels at how efficient everything seems. He feels very fortunate when he gets a job straight off, but the other members of his family are not quite so lucky.

The family is swindled right and left. They buy a house, but it's more of a "rent-to-own" sort of deal. They all suffer from the conditions in the factories. Elzbieta's children have to work, as does the tiny, delicate Ona. Stress from barely making ends meet, being overworked, and starvation rip the family apart. Jurgis's father dies after becoming ill from working in a cellar where meat is pickled; his frail wife, overworked and starving, dies giving birth to their second child (who dies as well); his toddler son dies after the rotten wood that made up the sidewalk in front of their house (or rather, the house where they paid rent to live in the freezing attic that had only half of its floorboards, after Jurgis spent time in "gaol" and the family lost the house that they "owned" after one late payment) collapsed and sent him into the rain-filled, muddy street, where he drowned. Okay, the book was getting a little over-dramatic by then, but you get the point: life was really shitty for the working class in that time. Any time that Jurgis started to feel some kind of hope, something terrible would happen and he would be in dire straits yet again.

100 years later, how different have things become in our country? Certainly food-packing and sanitation has improved (this book had a big part in bringing about some of the first of those policies in our country), but the big problem has not. What motivated the owners of those meat-packing companies to cut corners, to work their men to death and underpay them, to not take the time to ensure that their food was safe for human consumption? Greed. Companies are still greedy; the concern now wouldn't be with diseased meat, but what about chemical additives? What about the terrible conditions on these huge corporate farms?

Now obviously, since this book was published, the welfare system has been set up, so certainly people starving to death isn't as dire of an issue...but it still exists. The welfare system itself is pretty screwy, so some people who should be getting it aren't, and many people who don't really deserve it do. The problem for people in today's economy is debt (I know it's a problem that I've been dealing with): student loan debt, consumer debt, mortgages, etc. People sign on for these things, but then aren't able to keep up on the payments, and end of losing everything (just as Jurgis and his family did). Things come up, they keep falling behind...they just can't get out from under it. And there are plenty of institutions out there ready to take advantage of people who are in desperate financial situations. Too many people, like Jurgis and his family, learn it the hard way: there aren't many people out there that you can trust, and there are plenty of companies that are looking to bleed you dry.

Obviously this book is a work of Socialist propaganda. This was before "Socialist" became a dirty word in America. Sinclair expresses optimism in the book, through Jurgis's enthusiastic involvement with the party and its politics, that the Socialist party in America would grow and would overthrow the traditional two-party system. Um...yeah. Some of Sinclair's ideas about a communist future are amusing (the "technological" ideas of one Socialist in the book are dated, but present the idea that Socialists are not backwards, and indeed look to embrace the ways that technological can make people's lives better). Some of the ideas seem half-baked, such as one convoluted explanation for people would be compensated for their labor after the "revolution,"  but it's clear why the ideas of the Socialist party would appeal to someone like Jurgis, who has been torn up and spit out by the Capitalist machine. The way that Sinclair puts it, Socialism does seem like a logical solution to so many social issues. Unfortunately, the growth that Sinclar predicted in the party met some huge snags; for example, Sinclair mentions how in Germany, at that time, a third of the voters were Socialists. And those numbers continued to grow...until a certain individual came into power and formed a certain  Nazi Party, outlawing Socialism and executing Socialists in the Holocaust. And in the United States, of course, there was a little something called the Cold War, and Senator Joseph McCarthy going after any big-name person who'd ever had even the loosest association with the Socialist party.

More recently, President Obama has been accused of being a Socialist, especially with relation to the universal health plan. Whenever I heard pundits use that word in the negative, I would think, well, what the hell is wrong with being a Socialist, anyway? The way the characters in The Jungle make it sound, the whole spirit of being a Socialist involves looking out for everyone, making sure that everyone at least gets what he or she needs to live a worthwhile life. Everybody doing their part, living harmoniously, peace on earth...why does that have to be "hippie bullshit"? Why can't it be the way things actually are?

Because greed is real. Hate is real. And too many people are either hateful and greedy themselves, or feel like hate and greed are too powerful to stop. But people today aren't blind to the corruption in politics; they know how much power the corporations have, how they line the pockets of the politicians to get what they want. That's what the people were protesting about on Wall Street and all across America. The 1% who have everything...they're no different than the people running the show in Jurgis's world.

I guess the question still remains: as human beings, are we good enough to battle against hatred and greed? Are we strong enough to ignore the millionaire televangelists and follow the real teachings of Jesus, or to stand up to American companies that outsource their work instead of contributing to our economy, or to stop fast food corporations from taking over the world? Since learning about Socialism and Communism, I always thought that they were good in theory, but could never work in practice. I think I was about 13 when I started becoming socially aware. 13, and I had given up on my fellow man. I do wonder if Upton Sinclair would be so optimistic about the fate of mankind today.

Solidarity fist, a symbol associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests. People dedicated months to these protests, and what good did they do? They made the country a little bit more aware of the lack of balance in our country, I suppose.

Credit cards, which have brought many an American to financial ruin.