The Jungle By Upton Sinclair: The Idea That America Isn’t As Great As Everyone Makes It Out To Be
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a story about Jurgis Rudkus and his family who are Lithuanian immigrants. They come to America because they are tired of Lithuania's hierarchies and social rules. They settle in the city of Packingtown, the center of Chicago’s meatpacking industry which is a dangerous and filthy place where it is hard to find a job. The family faces multiple difficulties throughout the story and later learns that America isn’t as great as everyone makes it out to be.
The novel starts off at the wedding feast of Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite. The couple invites everyone in Packingtown to their wedding and they are supposed to pay tribute to the family. However, many guests leave the feast without contributing any money and this leaves the couple deeply in debt. Jurgis promises Ona that he will work harder to make money and look after her.
Once they get to the United States the family members look for jobs, Jurgis easily finds work because he is young, big, and strong. He works in the meatpacking plant where he makes seventeen and a half cents per hour and works 12 hours a day, he describes the packinghouses as dirty and unsanitary places. Safety standards aren’t observed because the few inspectors that do show up are paid off by the company to leave. The lamb meat that people thought they were buying was actually goat meat. Diseased parts of animals are injected with chemicals and spices and are canned to be sold to the public. Sometimes spoiled meat is marked as good and sent out for sale. Most of the workers don’t care and the bosses do everything they can to speed up the production process. There is no sick pay and workers can easily be fired if they are ill. A couple of other family members also quickly find jobs. Antanas, Jurgis’s father struggles to find work because he is elderly and can’t handle hard labor. The family signs an agreement to buy a house, but it turns out to be a scam. The agreement is full of hidden costs and the house is poorly maintained. Their living condition is not the best so they continue to work in hopes of finding a better place to stay. The book describes where they live as a slum, it is a long street with a horrible odor they could not describe. They said it smelled strong, raw, and crude, almost rancid. They have immense volumes of smoke that comes out of the chimneys and the outside is a view of ugly, dirty, little, wooden buildings everywhere.
Winter arrives and this is the most dangerous season in Chicago, the snow is so deep that the family has a hard time getting to work. Antanas eventually finds a job but it is too difficult for him and quickly kills him. Jurgis soon learns that his job is hard for him and his fellow workers. He also notices that the workers despise their job because it is awful. They are worked to the bone while their wages continue to decrease. Marija’s factory closes down and she loses her job. Distressed about the current state of his family Jurgis joins a union and begins to understand the political corruption and bribery that makes Packingtown run. Jurgis finds out that the union has its own politics that have nothing to do with helping workers. Ona is pregnant and eventually gives birth to a healthy boy and they name him Antanas, after Jurgis’s father. However, Ona is forced to return to work one week later, this causes her to have pain and sickness for the rest of her life. Then, Summer comes and things are starting to look up for the family until, Jurgis is injured on the job. His injury forces him to spend almost three months in bed, unable to work and the factory cuts off his pay. Jonas can’t take the misery anymore and disappears one day without saying a word to the family. Jurgis finally recovers and returns to work, but the factory refuses to give him his job back. He looks for employment and is forced to work at the fertilizer plant which is the worst place to work in Packingtown.
Slowly Jurgis notices that Ona has been changing lately and she’s pregnant again. One night Ona doesn’t return home after work and Jurgis discovers that her boss, Phil Connor has been forcing her to sleep with him. Jurgis is outraged so he attacks him and is thrown into jail. After an unfair trial, he gets sentenced to one month in prison while his family continues to struggle. They give him a $300 bond, but Jurgis doesn’t have the money so he is taken to a cell. The cell has two bunks, each one is infested with fleas and other rodents. At night, Jurgis paces back and forth “like a wild beast that breaks its teeth upon the bars of its cage. ” He even flings himself against the walls and beats them with his fists a few times. While in the cell he thinks about all the celebrations they had in Lithuania and how he missed it.
Then he realizes that America isn’t for him and his family, he declares all of society his enemy. When Jurgis returns home from jail he finds out that his family has been evicted from their home and are now living where they first stayed when they arrived in Chicago. Jurgis comes back to the tenement house after work one day, and finds out that Ona is giving birth several months before their child is due. Ona dies in childbirth and Jurgis doesn’t know what else to do, his world is falling apart. He dedicates himself to Antanas and his hope is somewhat renewed, but soon after this his hopes are shattered when his son drowns in a flooded street. At this point Jurgis has had enough so he abandons his surviving family members and becomes a tramp for the summer.
