The Jungle

About the book

Book author: Upton Sinclair

The book takes place in Chicago around 1900, and follows a lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, and his family. The state of the family is destitute. The underlying story theme is is social injustice.

The first part of the book follows Jurgis as he works in a meat factory. Factory work conditions are extremely harsh, and what happens to the animals without any regulation is appalling. A describing quote is “they use everything about the hog except the squeal”.

Meanwhile, the family buys a house over their budget and fall in what can only be described as a downward spiral of ever worsening calamity. The struggle to have a job, not freeze to death and not fall ill is constant for all family members. Enjoying the small slices of happiness in their life is hard because of the conditions. They are in perpetual debt while struggling so hard, and the debt spirals.

After a major crisis, Jurgis takes off. He becomes a “tramp”, i.e hobo in the countryside. Its freedom compared to his old life, which was an existence in capital chains. But this new life is not without struggle – he has to break into barns to sleep sometimes. Because he is a hard worker some farmers want to take him in and let him work on their farms, but he knows they wont have work for him in the winter, meaning its a temporary fix. An old acquaintance from his past stint in jail shows up and they resort to crime to sustain themselves.

Due to his social skills he finds shady work in politics that pays well. The downside is he now works for the “oppressors” he has fought for so long. He is selling his soul as he does this, because by seeing the other side he realises how rigged everything in Chicago is. His “elite” friends cannot get into legal trouble, and they buy election votes from the poor who don’t and can’t care because they have their own short-term problems.

In the end, not even politics worked. He lost his nerve and assaulted a powerful member of the elite. He becomes homeless and miserable once again after having to spend all his money and social capital bribing himself out of a potentially long jail sentence.

By chance he becomes involved in politics once more, but this time on the socialist side. It seems to fit his world view after everything he and his peers have endured. The book ends here. He finds “home” in socialism after experiencing the worst of capitalism. He feels that his life is better and has meaning now because there is a movement to fix everything wrong with the current conditions and system.

Reflection and takeaways

I did not enjoy the activity of reading this book because of the constant, endless misery. There was no break for the reader. Maybe this was partially the point. In any case, expect this.

The impact of the book was striking, because people forget how poor life conditions for workers were back then. During this period millions of people like Jurgis chased the American dream concurrently. The difference between worker supply and worker demand was off the charts, meaning workers had to endure anything to not get replaced and starve. In this arguably horrible time, Jurgis has nothing but extreme misfortune, almost at the point of parody, which at times feels exaggerated. Bad decisions by himself often made the situation worse (although made for understandable reasons).

The story is fictional (but evidently representative). This I could not always get over, as sometimes the book felt a bit long and you have to read about the constant misery of this imaginary person. However, the character growth of Jurgis was immense. From “good guy honest worker trying his best to support his family” to someone who has “seen some shit” and had his naivety shredded off by force.

The book is political in nature. The intention was to be a criticism against capitalism while being pro socialism, and by the end of the story the reader is probably more receptive towards socialism. What happened in reality was people got upset about the meat industry conditions, not capitalism. The impact was so great the embryo of the FDA formed.

Think of it as the “capitalism gone crazy” opposite of the legendary Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, in which socialism went crazy. In both cases, circumstances turn awful. I liked the Gulag Archipelago more because all the characters are real, not representative.

Why did I pick it

“Its one of my favourite books” - a friend

Verdict

3.⁷⁵⁄₅. Not an enjoyable read, but gives perspective on working.