The Jungle
1791
- slaughtering and slaughter-houses
- sociology
- lithuanian americans
- fiction
- historical fiction
- emigration and immigration
- packing-houses
- stockyards
- meat industry and trade
- corrupt practices
The story
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then President Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day.
What it’s like
Gritty, unsparing naturalism in plain, forceful prose, with the stench and grind of the Chicago stockyards pressing off every page: cold packing-house floors slick with blood and fat, smoke-choked tenement kitchens, the rattle of killing-floor machinery and the din of crowded boarding-house tables. Its mood is bleak and indignant, a sustained sense of dread that tips into outrage, with little to lighten it beyond the stubborn hope of its immigrant family. Pacing is relentless and episodic, moving from one blow of misfortune to the next, and the arc follows a Lithuanian family whose faith in the American dream is worn down by work, debt and injury. The violence is frequent and often graphic: slaughter scenes, mangling industrial accidents, deaths from poverty and disease, and cruelty by bosses and corrupt officials, all described in close, unflinching detail. Not gentle, and not for a relaxed read. It suits readers of social history and political fiction who want their anger sharpened and their conscience pricked.
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