The Jungle Book Review

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The Jungle Book Review
The Jungle book was written by Upton Sinclair. He was born in the year eighteen seventy eight September twentieth in Baltimore, Maryland. The parents of Upton Sinclair were part of the devastated and ruined Southern aristocracy. The place was impoverished and disoriented by the civil war. Father to Upton Sinclair was an alcoholic salesman of liquor. The family then moved to New York City. Upton Sinclair had flair in writing pulp fiction and dime novels. He got his degree from the University of Columbia. Sinclair was actively involved in socialism and got exposed to journalism (Sinclair 10).
Sinclair worked in the meat packaging plants where he was exposed to illegal deals. There was unsafe food handling which he documented in the book The Jungle. He related the packaging plants with jungle where jungle reflects the survival for the fittest. There were numerous corruptions in the beef trusts (Wolfs Para 4). President Roosevelt read the novel and instructed immediate investigations on the meat industry. He continued to state to Sinclair that he disliked the social polemic at the end of the novel. The book also highlighted the labor exploitation in America. The Jingle book exposes the muckraker.
The Jungle is well illustrated by different characters. Jurgis Rudkus family came to America for the Lithuania. He finds employment at the Chicago’s meat packaging plants mainly in the slaughterhouses. The family with time realizes that the American dream of wealth was far from the reality. They find themselves in poverty and unending toil. This is in reflection of the poor pay of the workers by the Chicago meatpacking plants. The workers are over worked; working environment has harmful conditions and subject to labour practices that are unfair. The neighborhoods of the gigantic meat packaging plants are in poverty (Sinclair 35). The place is characterized with rat invested houses, open sewers and smoldering garbage.
Jurgis’s family finds the living conditions unfavorable. They all resolve to work to survive. Jurgis’s father who is almost dying is subjected to work not forgetting the cousins, uncles and the stepchildren. Jurgis’s wife is pregnant and she too is subjected to work (Sinclair 84). The family members of Jurgis work in the slaughterhouses and they are sickened by the way meat was packaged in unhealthy style.
The company processes hogs and deceased cattle, as well. Pregnant cows and their foetus are also processed. This practice went on for years and years. Sausages were made from random mixture of animal parts. The factories were characterized with dirt, rat carcasses and rat poison all over (Sinclair 114). The bosses of the factories demanded gifts openly from the workers to elevate them in their social class and management hierarchy.
Jurgis found himself in many problems. He once found himself in jail, the wife and the baby died. He flees to the countryside leaving the rest of the family members suffering. Jurgis returns to Chicago after becoming penniless and almost starving. He finds himself begging in the streets and becomes a regular jailbird (Sinclair 185). A conman called Jack Duane initiates Jurgis to the life of crime. Jur...