- ISBN13: 9780140390315
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is a vivid portrait of life and death in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. A grim indictment that led to government regulations of the food industry, The Jungle is Sinclair’s extraordinary contribution to literature and social reform…. More >>
i had to read this book, but i don’t care now becuase i really liked it…it was a really aswesome book!
Rating: 4 / 5
Of all of Sinclair’s novels, the Jungle is the only one that has always been in print, assigned to generations of high school English students. A very superficial, normatively proper explanation would be that Sinclair’s other books are simply not worth reading any more (or a variation: if you read the Jungle you don’t need to read any other Sinclair because it is all the same).
My review is a short refutation of that standard, shallow explanation. The notion that Sinclair wrote one aesthetically pleasing novel and a few dozen unaesthetic novels is simply absurd. The Jungle is typical of Sinclair’s novels – neither better nor worse. The Jungle is the most read Sinclair novel because it is one of the least relevant. One has to struggle to find parallels in contemporary society of the sort of outrageousness that is depicted in the Jungle. “We have moved beyond that world” generations of English teachers and commentators tell their students and readers. But if we have moved beyond the world of horrible labor exploitation and unsanitary food handling conditions, why is the Jungle relevant at all. It isn’t.
Which is not the same that could be said of some of Sinclair’s harder to find novels. Some things that Sinclair wrote about in old novels have not changed much. We have not moved beyond some of the problems Sinclair wrote about in his other books. Which is precisely why there is an entire cultural, social movement to forget those out of print, expensive, hard to find Sinclair novels about bankers, politicians, businesspeople and workers. And that is why one should read Sinclair. The Sinclair that matters. Not the Sinclair of the old Chicago meatpackers in this irrelevant antiquity of a novel called “The Jungle”. But the Sinclair of the Bankers. The Sinclair of WWII. The Sinclair of Post-WWII American society. The Sinclair of our criminal justice system.
But as long as the out-of-print Sinclair is the Sinclair that matters as a critic of our society and its political and economic systems, the Jungle will likely be preserved for future generations of as the only Sinclair “safe enough” to be shared and preserved. One should do what can be done to consider the less politically and socially “safe” Sinclair.
Rating: 3 / 5
On the socialism one needs to heed “the times” they were in. well before the information age of how we can now see and listen and freely read about all things that are happening around the USA and the world. 1900, news papers, that’s it. No TV, no radio, no internet, and even the papers were “controlled”, no free speech back then. All this means that when your hurting, and hurting real bad and for many years, you are looking for some way out, anything can come along and sound good.
And as bad as all this was, imagine how even WORSE it was for the disabled! blind, deaf, etc. oh man, you don’t even want to “go there” truly must have been treated like animals….. and the ADA? What?
Lastly, why is SPAM still being sold in the 21st Century? Because people will buy it, amazing isn’t it? GROSS
Rating: 4 / 5
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a heartrending story about a Lithuanian family’s struggle when they come to America during the Industrial Revolution. Upton Sinclair depicts the harsh lifestyle by telling it through both the events and emotions the family faced. When I was about halfway through the novel I asked myself, “could he (Upton Sinclair) make it anymore miserable?” Every time the protagonist of the novel (Jurgis) finds some good, he always ends up in agony by the chapter’s end. While the novel’s intent is not to teach Economics, I found it did a good job at just that. The Jungle illustrates the societal problems we would face if we had a purely capitalist society without constraint in this present day.
While the book is about 400 pages in length don’t let that scare you. Many famous classic novels tend to be very wordy and hard to understand. The Jungle on the other hand flows nicely, and the context easy to understand.
To an extent, I wish US History classes would make students read this book. If you are in search of a novel that will cheer you up and make you feel warm inside, this is not the right book, however. I highly recommend this novel for anyone in search of a good book to read and learn a bit about the hardships immigrants faced during the industrial revolution.
Rating: 5 / 5
From the standpoint of literature this book is exceptional only its ridiculousness. The characters are passive, dull, cliché, and often utterly puerile in their understanding of their circumstances (this reflects upon the limited thought process of the author).
In respect to the vulgarity discussed by Sinclair in respect to the food industry of this era it should be noted the industry had already been exposed by various NON-fiction writers of the period (preceding Sinclair), and much of the industry had consequently been reformed in respect to the processing of food by the time this book was published. Essentially the government mandated regulatory reforms that were instituted the following year as a result of the popularity of this book were unnecessary, and superficial (oh but they made the public feel good inside). Conversely had Sinclair decided to be objective in his critique of the meatpacking industry in contrast to producing propagandist ‘muckracking’ so-called journalism derived out of his own subjective views in support of socialist ideology he would have discovered the previously mentioned actuality, but since this is a work of fiction he could write anything he wished, and he did. Why Sinclair went down the road of sensationalism in this novel may be attributable to the failures of his first four books. However, because he decided to go down that road he cannot be taken seriously as a scholar in any respect.
This is a literary work of fiction, and should not be taken seriously as a non-fictional scholarly critique. With that noted it also falls short in regard to literary style, and because the characters are passively portrayed by Sinclair in contrast to being actively portrayed it is difficult for the reader to form any authentic connection with them (they exist more as abstractions).
Rating: 1 / 5