Rating: 
Summary: Great Factual Account; Mediocre Novel
Review: Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," a tale of poverty and politics in early 1900's Chicago has many good and bad facets to it.To give a brief synopsis of the book: A Lithuanian family ignorant to the ways of the "free" world moves to America in hopes of something better than they had back home. Upon arriving, they find out that things are worse than they could ever imagined being in America, and for that matter back home in Lithuanian. Horrendous troubles ensue. Most people associate this book with the the cliché renderings of the meat packing plants detailed in the book. Sinclair was given $500 by a newspaper for rights for a novel he had yet to write, and spent only five weeks in Chicago researching material for his account. After writing it and being turned down by many companies who were too afraid of what might happen had they published it, the factual portrayals Sinclair wrote were investigated by higher authorities, and upon finding that they were valid, Sinclair teamed up with Doubleday and his classic came to be, a classic that prompted government officials into making regulations still held today for food packaging and handling. The story revolves around Jurgis, the young husband who has come with his faithful (even younger at age 16) wife and his experiences. He realizes that there is no way he as an immigrant can obtain a suitable job, and is left to working in "Packingtown," the area where the meats of many states and major cities are developed. The gruesome accounts lie within---Sinclair talks about how unsanitary the workplace is for the butchers/cleaners/packers, citing situations where people fell in with the dead animals and chemicals and ended up being used in the meats since it would be too hard to fish them out; how pigs were tied to chains and hoisted in the air, screaming at fear of the unknown, only to have their throats sliced seconds later; how a little boy ended up drinking beer (an unknown beverage to him), getting drunk and being left in the factory one night in the cold, and how rats ate him alive. And yes, that's sparing you the details. I'm not the kind of person who gets easily disgusted, but one can definitely become grossened by page after page of such descriptions, so if you can't handle it, I'll give the stereotypical warning: don't read the book. Once you get past that, however, one realizes two things: the book as a novel in and of itself is perhaps a little above average, but the main reason why it has stuck around was because of the aforementioned contributions it has made to society. The story is fairly interesting, and has its high points (i.e. the chapter where Ona gives birth to her second child nearly brought me to tears), and even towards the last fifty pages or so, when there are situations where Sinclair does nothing with the story except write about groups of people talking about politics, I wasn't turned off by the general boring aura given off---I was actually pulled to it, and enjoyed it. As for the physicality of the book, it's well put together. It's not too long (380 pages), has a nice typeset and words to page which makes it easier to read than many books(I finished it in three days without devoting too much time to it), and has a good introduction by Jane Jacobs. Overall, this is definitely a good book to read over a weekend to mark off your "I've read <<insert title here>>" list. It's a classic for different reasons, but most assuredly worth the purchase. Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: A dark view of early 20th century American immigrant life
Review: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a dark, depressing look at the American immigrant experience around the turn of the Twentieth Century. In addition to the obvious attacks on the Chicago stockyard barons, Chicago politicians, labor practices, and food standards, The Jungle represents Sinclair's attack upon Capitalism, as well.
We follow the main character, Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, as he and his family establish themselves in Chicago and get to work in the great stockyard industry. He goes from healthy and strong to beaten down and broken, as stockyard accidents, political and commercial swindles, and a succession of personal tragedies eventually drive him to a life of starvation, drunkenness, petty crime, racketeering, and violence.
Sinclair does uncover numerous failures of the Capitalistic system, so I will not begrudge him his attack on the system. It should be pointed out, however, that this is a failure of Capitalism under a collection of exceptional circumstances: corrupt government and law-enforcement at all levels (nothing exceptional there, I hear you saying), combined perhaps with a weak or crooked press, and, most importantly, an unending, unorganized, bewildered stream of immigrant labor which did not speak English, did not understand its rights, and was unable, because of these reasons and because of never-ending fear for its livelihood, to complain. Most of these conditions do not prevail in today's developed world, at least, and not to the same extent and all at once, but The Jungle still serves as a warning concerning what can happen when the Invisible Hand is at work while the other hand covers the eyes of society.
The descriptions of the stockyards are horrifying. Horrifying. The work itself, when it goes according to plan, is grim, filthy, smelly, and difficult, at the best of times. When things do not go according to plan, we find sick and "downed" cattle being slaughtered after normal hours, when the largely decorative government inspectors aren't around; we find spoiled meat left sitting for months boiled in with the rest of the witches' brew that becomes canned meat; we find men slipping on the greasy floors over the boiling vats of soon-to-be canned meat and falling in, after which their bones-the only bits left-are fished out, and the rest stays in the canned meat mixture; we find children accidentally locked inside the buildings at night, where the rats eat them alive before their remains are discovered in the morning.
The cynical side of me tells me that people probably were more outraged about their tainted meat products than they were about the treatment of thousands of immigrants, but, in any case, Sinclair's story caught the public's attention. It appears less evident, though, that his rousing battle cry for Socialism, which took up the last 40 pages of my 290-page text, was heeded. I'm afraid Capitalism and its accompanying Pursuit of the American Dream already had taken hold for good by then.
I had to stop and think for a moment when I considered whether I thought this book was well-written or not. I don't think it matters terribly much, because the point of the story is more important than the quality of the story itself; however, purely for the dark mood of hopelessness running through the work, the writing is effective at worst and grimly evocative of the stark reality facing hundreds of thousands of immigrants at its best. While reading this, I often found myself thinking of the inscription on our treasured Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Yes, please send them-we have some use for them. We can keep them tired and poor, and as for huddled masses and wretched refuse, there's plenty of that in the stockyards. Give your family a couple of generations and we'll work on the breathing free bit. Welcome to America.
Rating:
Summary: The Jungle
Review: What I thought about this book was that Upton Sinclair did a very good job on describing the hardships of immigrants coming to the United States for the first time. The base of the story in my opinion was very depressing to read. Jurgis when he first arrives is already scan dueled by his travel agent. The book is depressing also because things only seem to become worse for Jurgis. His work does not pay much, his wife is forced t cheat on him, he is put in jail multiply times, his new child die along with his wife, his son dies later, he lives life as a hobo for awhile and he is constantly poor. The description of the working conditions and how the meatpacking industry worked in the 1900's was grow test. It made me really think about eating meat for at least a week. But towards the end of the book Jurgis is given hope for the future. This book was a hard one to get through, was very informative for me. It really opened my eye to the injustice that was going on and that is still going on in some part of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Socialism... WHAT?
Review: When I was assigned THE JUNGLE as one of my Summer reading assignments I was told that it was about the slaughter houses and expected it to be all about the gross things that go into our food. I'd heard THE JUNGLE called the FAST FOOD NATION (which I was also assigned) of it's time. But the book talks little about this, and focuses more on the hardships of immigrant life. The bad working conditions are certainly part of this, but the book also talks about the strains on family relationships, the bitter cold, and the way in which the family is taken advantage of time and time again. Suddenly, at the end, the book shifts gears almost entirely as Sinclair describes the benefits of Socialism. This seems completely out of place. If I'd known-going into it-that the book's purpose was to show the evils of Capitalism and the benefits of Socialism, perhaps I would have paid more attention and watched for clues. I say this so that perspective readers may begin their reading knowing to look for instances of Capitalism and Socialism throughout the book.
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