For school a few months ago, I did a piece on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. This was a book I personally hate, but it still has a few good points for discussion. Here it is:
Critical Response for Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
By Noghiri
The Jungle was a book by Upton Sinclair, originally printed in serial form. The book tries to show how Socialism is better than Capitalism and why. Over the course of the book, the main character, Jurgis, comes to America and is gradually destroyed by Capitalism. The first two thirds follow the writing style known as Zolaism or Naturalism. This style takes the main character through many hardships and usually a final defeat. The last portion does not follow this style as Jurgis finds hope and salvation from the ‘System’.
Thesis
Sinclair’s Chicago was not like the Chicago we know today. Sinclair’s Chicago was a dark, grim place not too different from a Dystopian world found in many books. The rich own everything, the poor own nothing, and there is nothing in between. Working conditions are horrible, and death rates are high. Many parts of this were true: The bad food and the poverty, for example. Others were made up or exaggerated: the rat poison in the food vats, along with dead rats, and the death by fertilizer vat. Sinclair also shows the political parties as an evil, to be bought and sold like everything else. This did admittedly happen, but not nearly to that extent, otherwise the reforms that have been law for just a few months over one hundred years would not exist.
Sinclair also placed the characters in a cycle of dehumanization, changing them from rational humans into beasts not responsible for anything. God did not design us to be broken, and we are always humans, faults and all. We still all have responsibility for all our actions. This cycle could have been broken by making a simple moral decision at any stage, and if the cycle had progressed, it would still be possible to get back on track in life.
Evidence
1. Example A:
Connor, Ona’s boss could not have made things as impossible as he had threatened. He had threatened that Ona and her family would have no work. This would only work if they stayed in the city. They could move to another city, and get work there. Connor’s reach did not extend that far. Around this time, the Tobacco rolling plants in Florida were very nice and well run. Ybor ran things safely, and paid for a newsreader for the workers. Usually, the workers would have to pay themselves. Thus, political and business corruption was not as wide-spread and bad as Sinclair made things to be.
2. Example B:
Throughout the book, Sinclair represents the characters as animals, not truly accountable for their actions. When Jurgis breaks his arm, Sinclair presents him as unable to compete on equal terms with his competitors. Late in the book, Marija makes a living satisfying animal desires. Sinclair makes her not truly responsible for her decisions. Had she made a more moral choice, Sinclair’s arguments would have unraveled. Sinclair does not show this, but had this been nonfiction, Marija would have been the one main deciding factor in her situation.
3. Example C:
If nothing else, Jurgis is consistent. He was always a hard worker. However, to cope with it, and his son and wife’s death, he turned to alcohol, one of the more readily available forms of perceived pain deadening. Here and in real life, alcohol is an anesthetic. If you cannot handle your shortfalls and pain, you usually turn to some form of anesthetic.
4. Example D:
Kind of a continuation of Example C. Marija turned to drugs as her anesthetic. People still do that today: If you are going to die and return to the nothingness from whence you think came (or maybe come back as something else, still feeling pain), why not spend the days you still have on a high. Sinclair makes this pain out to be a direct result of capitalism. The problem is more fundamental. The pain is a result of not having a relationship with God. Nihilism is a philosophy that causes pain: Everything you do turning into dust in the long run, while the planet goes around the sun until the sun goes into supernova, and even that doesn’t mean squat in the end. A biblical philosophy gives you a nice place to go in the end. If you believe, and you are wrong, you’ll just turn into dust. If you are an atheist and you’re wrong, then you end up in the lake of fire. It’s just safer to be a Christian.
Conclusion
Sinclair’s cycle can be broken, simply by following God’s word. Drugs and alcohol are merely futile escapism from the real problem. Only one person is responsible for most of your troubles: You. The rest are back blasts from someone else’s problems. All of your problems can be fixed, or at least made manageable, including those originating from someone else. No animal could come up with a philosophy. My cat does not, at least, and if he does, he’s not telling.
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