The Jungle (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Upton Sinclair
- First Published: 1906
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: Factories, Family or family life, Politics, Socialism, Twentieth century, American Dream, Chicago, Poverty or poor people, Immigration or emigration, Adultery, Politicians, Working class, Tuberculosis, Unions or unionism, Fraud, Meat, Sanitation
- Locales: Chicago, IL, Lithuania
The abuses in the meatpacking industry were known before the publication of The Jungle. In the 1898 intervention in Cuba, some three thousand American soldiers died from eating canned beef, and (soon to be President) Theodore Roosevelt himself testified against the Beef Trust. The Hearst newspapers brought about a Senate investigation, and there were several muckraking exposés, but little changed until Sinclair's fateful trip to Chicago to observe immigrant workers at work. Although he had little interest in them as immigrants, Sinclair's descriptions of their customs,...
[The entire page is 871 words long]
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