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Editorial Review Product Description
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. ... Read more Customer Reviews (217) 
Profoundly Depressing
In the early 1900s, it seems to outsiders that Chicago is the place to be.It is expanding like wild, and is the center of commerce and innovation.Chicago is the home of the companies producing much of the meat that is packaged and shipped around the country, and requires a huge labor force to carry out the slaughter and packing of the animals.
Jurgis, a Lithuanian peasant, has decided that his future rests in America.He buys passage to the country for himself, his fiancee Ona, and several other family members who are all certain that they will arrive in Chicago and strike it rich, finding better lives for themselves in the land of opportunity.
Once they arrive, though, the group finds that Chicago is rife with corruption.There are so many more laborers than there are jobs, so it is hard to find a place and even harder to keep it once it is found.Around every corner are those who wait to swindle the trusting immigrants.Jurgis, as the main support of the extended family, goes through a brutal process of disenchantment, as he realizes his life in Chicago is not at all the better existence that he'd expected.
There are some interesting parts to this book.I found the descriptions of the slaughterhouses both fascinating and gruesome.I feel a great deal more understanding and compassion for people trying to survive such a horrific piece of history as Jurgis and his family.Although there is so much talk today of the abuses of America's welfare system and other social programs, and talk about how unions are too powerful and demanding, this book clarifies exactly why these programs and organizations were necessary in the first place.Life was truly desperate in times before there were safety nets in place for workers.
Despite there being interesting pieces to this book, I found it for the most part to be nearly unreadable; it was so profoundly depressing.Every tiny glimmer of hope for Jurgis and his family was almost immediately squashed; they endured every possible horror imaginable, and around every turn the book was clearly stating there was simply no hope.Only at the end, when Jurgis had lost everything over and over again, did he find a purpose to life.In my opinion, it was a pretty weak one.The novel was simply painful to read, all the way through.
Tough read but definitely should be considered a classic
Firstly, I read this book on my own; meaning I was never assigned the book for a class. I had however heard of it when I studied U.S. history and found that the book sparked an investigation of the meat packing plants. I almost felt cheated when I started to read the book and realized that this was not so much about how disgusting the standards of the meat were that they were packaging as I was told by many of the readers.
Sinclair himself has been caught saying that he was trying to reach people's hearts with this book and instead he missed and hit their stomachs and it is really a shame that he did. Of the 380 some pages, about 12 of them were dedicated to how gross the meat was when they packaged it and the rest was about the suffering of a poor Lithuanian family trying to get by. My heart ached with every page I read about this family. This heartbreaking tale was far too true for many people of this time and it only makes me grateful to live in a time where working conditions have improved greatly.
The more I read, the harder is was to put down, and the more depressed I got. This book truly makes me appreciate things like workman's comp., medical leave, unions, and USDA standards. Though he didn't mean to, Sinclair has made a great impact on the rights of the working man, as well as standards of meat today. I didn't get the story I was looking for about the intimate details of rotten meats or bodily fluids making their way into to the meat, but I did find an amazing story about the immigrants who fought to stay alive in tough times of the nation.
Stark and Raw
When I was a senior and in my American History class, we were starting the unit on early 20th century America. Our history book contained a quote from Upton Sinclair (since the chapter was talking about political corruption, etc) and the teacher asked if any of us read the 'Jungle' (which was mentioned in that chapter along with muckraking)
I was the only one to raise my hand.
A couple of years before, I had read it at my leisure on the recommendation of a different teacher who knew I liked to read. The descriptions of the meat-factory and the slums is heart-rending, like others say, but it does not affect the quality of the book. If not for Mr. Sinclair's books, we might not have had as much reform to the meat system as we do now, (though today, conditions are still nasty) Plenty of other stuff is explored here - poverty, political corruption, police corruption, and the like. It's all very frank and clearly written with a lot of research from the author. It's hard to not sympathize with Jurgis even after he runs away from his family - or what's left of it, at least. Not that you can blame him, after you read about the ways he has been taken advantage of and abused, something all too common with immigrants, especially poor and uneducated ones. This is a top-notch book which is just as relevant over a century later - we still have problems with political corruption, poverty, tainted meat (read Fast Food Nation), what have you.
Survival of the most corrupt (3.5 stars)
Written in 1906, The Jungle is the very unhappy story of Jurgis, an illiterate Lithuanian immigrant, who finds work in the meat packing industry outside of Chicago.He marries his fiancée, Ona, and tries to create a decent life in America.Unfortunately, they and their extended family naïvely believe Jurgis alone will be able to support them - he is, after all, young, very strong, and entirely willing.But one by one everyone, including the children, is forced to take horrendously frightening jobs.They innocently fall prey to unscrupulous employers and lenders, becoming essentially paid slaves, wearing themselves out physically and morally.
From a literary standpoint (not that I'm an expert judge) I found the language and writing a bit flat, and it seems obvious that it was meant primarily as propaganda.However, the title is clever in that it evokes a lush, green, and paradisiacal setting (probably especially so to 1906 audiences), which is how many view the United States then and now.Instead the characters run into a reality every bit as menacing and dangerous as a real jungle would be.I also found the moral decay was portrayed in a very interesting and believable way: because of their desperate circumstances they initially accept the idea of the children working, to beating the traumatized 13 year old Stanislovas to get him to go to work on snowy days, to Ona's handling of her boss' advances.Apart from that, I think the book's merit stems mostly from the social and political implications.
I heard about this book many times in economics classes and I determined to eventually read it.But it is such an unhappy and miserable book that once I finally picked it up I regret I am unable to finish it, although I may come back to it another time (I listened to the audio book at the gym each morning and it's NOT a pleasant way to start the day, especially around the Christmas season).Nevertheless, this book was highly influential in 1906 in correcting some of the abuses in the food industry, leading to the eventual establishment of the FDA.Unfortunately, Sinclair's purpose in writing it was instead to expose the inhuman conditions the workers were subjected to, but this aspect received far less attention.And while the book misguidedly extols Socialism at the end as a panacea to the ills of Capitalism, it was a good illustration of the potential for abuse and corruption that is usually overlooked and ignored.True: it's fiction even if it is based on the reality Sinclair saw, but still a valid reminder that our capitalist system isn't perfect, and is perhaps a good counterpoint to George Orwell's 1984 (which my teenage son recently read for school and discussed with me).
So, while I didn't particularly enjoy reading it, I recognize the book's importance even though I think Socialism is a greater evil (I suspect Sinclair might have been very disturbed at the corruption later displayed by Socialist and Communist governments).The audio book version I listened to was read by Robert Morris, who does an excellent job, particularly with the Lithuanian accents.
Very useful
I needed this book for my son's history class. It was a very reasonable price and in perfect condition. Thanks!
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