Critical Book Review Of Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

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Laura Masteller H106 Block 8 Critical Book Review The Jungle is a novel that focuses its story on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. It was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into Chicago and the stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who lived and worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. The main arguments in this novel are the horrible conditions in the meat packing industry, and the treatment to the immigrants. The annihilation of Jurgis’s family at the hands of the economic and social system demonstrates the effect of capitalism on the working class as a whole. As the immigrants,…show more content…
He joins a socialist party and embraces the idea that the workers should own factories. He finds a job a socialist-run hotel and is reunited with Teta Elzbieta. The argument to this novel is basically that socialism is a better option than capitalism. Sinclair is trying to say that without socialism, we will be forced to live a life as Jurgis did. The basic way to describe socialism is a lighter form of communism. I don't agree with the authors ideas on government because it is know about eighty years after the story was written and we have gotten along just fine while other countries have relied on communism and collapsed. Sinclair’s purpose in writing The Jungle was to persuade people to join the socialist party and to adopt the view that socialism is the only way to conquer the capitalistic empires that abuse the working class. The socialist ethic is that the general public will have joint ownership of the factory. Sinclair uses many clever devices in order to get his readers to agree with this ethic. He keeps the many characters basically flat and two-dimensional through the whole novel. They are not developed any
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