The+Jungle

__**Background Information Regarding //The Jungle//**__ __**//Adapted from Georgetown University American Literature Syllabus://**__

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues
Any discussion of //The Jungle// should mention the unsanitary conditions in the Chicago meat-packing industry at the turn of the century and the federal legislation that Congress passed as a result of the national furor that Sinclair's muckraking novel created. However, it is equally important to emphasize that //The Jungle// was--and is--primarily an indictment of wage slavery. Sinclair's purpose in writing the novel was to document the inhumane treatment of working men and women in industrial capitalism and to argue that socialism provided the only solution to the problem.

Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions
Questions of style and form often seem irrelevant to //The Jungle//. However, it is possible to discuss the primitive, at times brutal, prose of the novel as an appropriate vehicle to convey the quality of human life that Sinclair found in the stockyards of Chicago: working men and women reduced to the level of the dumb beasts they were butchering on the killing fields.

Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections
//The Jungle// should be considered in the context of three separate but related literary movements in America. First, the novel comes out of the muckraking era. The Muckrakers--so named by Theodore Roosevelt because they, like the Man with the Muckrake in //Pilgrim's Progress//, looked down at the filth and ignored the celestial crown--exposed and attempted to correct graft and corruption in both government and business. The most famous of the Muckrakers, in addition to Sinclair, were Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, whose major works, //The Shame of the Cities// and //History of the Standard Oil Company// respectively, appeared in 1901. //The Jungle// also has its roots in American naturalism, with its first twenty-one chapters conforming, in both form and content, to the typical naturalistic novel of that period. For example, both style and psychological complexity are subordinated to the necessary machinations of the plot--the inevitable movement toward chaos and disintegration. Jurgis and his family***are victims of hereditary, environmental, social, and economic forces beyond their control--forces that shape their lives in an impersonal, mechanistic way. Of course, what distinguishes //The Jungle// from these other examples of American naturalism is the turn toward socialism in the last four chapters, which allows Sinclair to end his novel on an optimistic note. The fact that Sinclair was a socialist, and that he used his writing as a vehicle to express his socialism, identifies him with the group of radical writers and artists that was centered in Greenwich Village (where the radical socialist magazine //The Masses// was published) and that included Floyd Dell, Randolph Bourne, Lincoln Steffens, Max Eastman, and John Reed. Sinclair, like these other socialist writers of the Progressive Era, understood that journalism and fiction could be used as political tools. Sinclair's critique of American capitalism has much in common with his fellow socialists in the pre-World War I period.

Questions for Reading and Discussion/ Approaches to Writing
1. (a) Discuss //The Jungle// as an indictment of wage slavery and compare it to other works of literature that attack antebellum slavery (e.g., Harriet Beecher Stowe's //Uncle Tom's Cabin// ). (b) Discuss Sinclair's portrait of industrial capitalism in //The Jungle//. Look at the connection between the meat-packing industry and the other institutions represented in the novel. Look at the function of money and the false sense of security it promises. Look at Jurgis's response to hardship: "I will work harder."