Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, has been a major influence on American History. The novel’s success stems from how it exploited the American meatpacking industry and eventually led to the passing of the Food and Drug act of 1906. Though the novel discusses the American era of Industrialization in Chicago, the title refers to this era as a Jungle. Sinclair’s title, The Jungle, symbolizes the worker’s struggle for a good life in a country where capitalist’s prosperity is defined by their poor treatment of the meatpacking industry along with the workers. The novel is most famous for its influence on the meat packing industry. The novel describes unsanitary working conditions. Leslie Levin writes, “Sinclair describes Jurgis’s hell of a workplace as hot, dark, dirty, smelly and, above all, filled with germs and disease” (Levin 3). The meat was processed in unsanitary industries. George Shaduri, in reference to the setting in which The Jungle was written, writes, “Not a gram of any meat, healthy or ill, goes to waste” (Shaduri 2). It was common that dead or diseased cattle would still be processed and cold to civilians. Not only was this unsanitary, but it was also unhealthy. Sinclair’s depiction of the
Levin describes a jungle in her statement that says, “The jungle itself is a powerful image defined as a place of violence, struggle for survival, or ruthless competition” (Levin 2). She connects this title to the novel when she describes how Sinclair’s The Jungle is a place where workers struggle to get by and livestock is mistreated and killed in unsanitary slaughterhouses so that the capitalists may prosper. The title is a major symbol for Sinclair’s novel to show the struggle for those at the bottom, and the prosperity of those on