American History The Jungle
Upton Sinclair determines in the novel regarding the Jurgis immigrant family. The family immigrates to Chicago Lithuania in search of a better living and achieving higher level of standards. The author clearly describes their experiences that how their American dream of achieving better living turns into a nightmare where the social setting of the family ends with the involvement in corruption.
The Jurgis family thought of Chicago as a heaven where they could have achieved better living. The reality comes visible in front of the Jurgis family when they are exposed to the real facets of the city. Upton Sinclair had mentioned the family setting of a couple who recently got married. The step mother of the bride also lived with the couple. The author had used all the characters the best way he could to demonstrate the capitalist setting. The author had used Jurgis, the head of the family as the protagonist of his story.
The family gets to know about the real facets of Chicago when they experienced transformations in living in a downward slope. As soon as the family arrived in the city they experienced that they would be getting a lot of hard time in settling down in the city. The Jurgis family housed in the middle of the packing town that was the hub of meatpacking industries. Packing town was a very filthy place for a family to live and in no way was suitable for a healthy living. But the Jurgis family as they were immigrated newly, they had to settle down at packing town in order to adjust to the changes. Moreover the home they started to live in was just fifteen years old which were made up of the shoddiest material. The housing changes were the biggest transformation in the living of Jurgis.
The family was unable to get away with their family problems and extreme poverty therefore the other members of the Jurgis family also started to toil moil for the purpose of getting enough wage to run the house. Ona, wife of Jurgis started to sewn clothes that was against the American dream that the family had. The family never lived together and remained busy in earning money for the well-being of the familys standard of living. The capitalist society did not even let them stay together. There were several unjust ways through which the labor were being managed and organized. In winters many industries were locked down resulting in increase in unemployment. The labor force was not given any money for the partial time of being unemployed. The poor status quo of the government almost got the middle class rotten (Sinclair 65-68).
The author Upton Sinclair also points out the capitalist society as the anti-Christian society. The family also went through cultural transformation in the Chicago. The Christians and Jewish immigrants from eastern-European countries were practicing their culture in the new place but people in the American society forced the immigrants to work during Christmas holidays. In this way the families used to live apart and they were forced to become less indulgent in religious activities.
There were other types of transformations that took place in the lives of Jurgis family one after another. The beginning of his employment in Chicago was the meat packing job where he had to do work in the filthy area with low wages to work for. Moreover the workers were treated very badly as if they were bought and they had no rights. It was just the beginning of the family problems. Due to the low wages it was complicated for the immigrant families like Jurgiss family to grow prosperously in the American setting of capitalism.
Jurgis always thought of doing a work like the rich people would do but unfortunately he ends up in the heard of immigrants where the life of Jurgis became ill-fated. Jurgis had no other task but to slaughter and clean the animals. It was something against the American dream of the Jurgis family.
Sinclair describes that the capitalism pushed the family to attempt corrupted characters in order to run their lives. As in the first 27 chapters of the book, the family undergoes mighty changes that they never ever thought of. The head of the family Jurgis gets arrested and then he is jailed. His wife is also forced to sleep with his boss because of the adverse situation for the family to get the food as Jurgis was jailed and there were no means of food for them (Sinclair 416). Such change in living and ethical remarks projected that poor living was the outcome of capitalism
The lives of the family of Jurgis was getting harder day by day because every day they were being exposed to extreme failures of laws in the city. Moreover they experienced higher rates of corruption in the city that led them to attain attributes that never thought would be there in their lives. In the later part of the book Jurgis had been projected as a depressed man because he gets completely disconnected from his family because he had been arrested thrice. Moreover the family experienced adverse situation at home therefore they had to leave the home and move to the slum camps. The family setting in the capitalist society of Chicago was totally ruined and they were pushed to live a life of beggars.
The author had been considered as an extremely successful account in motivating the readers of his novel. The message that had been conveyed by Upton Sinclair to the readers through his novel is that the socialism is the only way out through which one can easily get away with all the problems of the capitalist system. The author had wonderfully explained the historical context of capitalist society through the characters of his novel. The novel also describes that the following years were very crucial for the immigrants as the first wave of the immigrants had to live in the poor conditions. Immigrants that came to America after the Jurgis family were badly treated. All such transformations had destroyed the setting of Jurgiss family that resulted in psychological attack.
The author had only described one family setting among the thousands of immigrants who came to America for a better living. The capitalism system ruined a great number of family settings. The concept of racism also greatly affected the societal associations of the people from the lowest class to the upper class where the people regarded the black and white game as the problem to be solved by weapons. The natives called the blacks as the criminals and lethargic people. People regarded the workers of the meatpacking industries as dirty people and that why they ignored talking to them
The author had been successful in defending his thesis that the capitalist society will be unable to make the lives of the people prosperous. The author had projected the transformations in the lives of the Jurgis family as the depiction of social Darwinism. The author had clearly described that the capitalist society will never provide social benefits equally and justly. In the capitalist society people will continue to experience unjust transformations as the Jurgis family did as because in a capitalist society only handful of people will be able to excel while a good majority of people would only get less chances to experience the opportunity of successful ventures.
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment