The Jungle is one of those books I’d heard spoken of for years. For some reason, I’d always thought it was a journalistic account of Chicago’s meat-packing industry. However, it’s actually a novel, and while it is allegedly supported by accounts from Upton Sinclair’s stint working undercover in a meat-packing plant, it is nevertheless wholly fictional.
The story concerns a Lithuanian family who immigrates to America at the turn fo the 20th century. At the center of the story is Jurgis Rudkus, a large and preternaturally strong man who begins with an idealized vision of the New World and his place in it. Slowly, through a series of misfortunes exacernbated by the callousness of the industry and the peripheral figures who prey on its victims—for instance, a duplicitous realtor who sells them a house with strings attached—the family is ground down by capitalism.
Jurgis, beaten by fate, becomes a tramp before returning and wheedling his way into the political machinery of the city. Here he lives a large but vacuous existence that crumbles due to long-simmering avarice. At his lowet, he discovers socialism, and ends the book a devoted convert. The last chapters barely concern him at all, but are instead verbatim speeched from impassioned socialists, and a recounting of the 1904 election where socialists performed well, with an ecstatci prophecy of coming victory.
It will come as no surprise to readers that Sinclair was himself a socialist, and saw the book as a way to demonstrate the inherent evils of capitalism, and the potential salvation offered by his ideaology. Apart from the strident, almost non-sequitor ending, I didn’t find the moral too imposing on the story. Jurgis seemed like a real man, and his struggle,s while intense, were believable. Life really was brutal for working class people at the time, and while Sinclair’s heart is unquestionably on his sleeve, I wouldn’t accuse him of exaggerating anything ,for the simple reason that he didn’t have to.
Sinclair’s prose is crisp and of its era, easy to read and lively without being too florid. I suspect I’d find the book harder to take if I was less in sympathy with his outlook, but whatever your politics, he can clearly write a novel. I’d be interested to read some of his other work