Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

The Jungle Review
The Jungle is a perfect example of an effective form of muckraking journalism that affected the masses and catalyzed the reform movements of the Progressive Era. The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was a story that not only focused on the unfortunate life of a Lithuanian family headed by a man named Jurgis, searching for the American dream, but also the corruption and reform attempts of the Chicago government and Packingtown. Even though Sinclair discusses the corruption, bribery, and union system that control the working class, it is left to the reader to decide whether Sinclair’s accounts are accurate depictions of Chicagoan society. In comparison to historical facts and documents discussed in class, the stories of reform
He is influenced by their corruption and their good deeds, switching both sides many times. First, when Jurgis and his family move to America, he is helped out by a friend that moved to America previously and made a decent middle class living as an owner of a butcher shop.6 After a run of bad look for Jurgis and his family, he meets a woman that is keen on improving their situation. As the wife of a factory owner, she uses her connections to get Jurgis a good paying job. However nice this woman is, the fact is that she still uses unethical ways by threatening her husband to give Jurgis the job, even if it is the right thing to do.7 Later on after Jurgis gets injured, he turns to the corrupt connections of a political machine to make quick money. This part of the middle class, more corrupt than the other more honest people he has met, ask him to do things that don’t always better the workers rights and conditions, when that’s what he used to care about.8 These political machines made certain working class men into middle class men with power and were able to influence their constituents to vote for the politician that would provide better benefits for workers and the corrupt members of the political machine. It was important for these political machines to gain the power of the masses in the working class, because that gave them power in our modern government system of democracy. One point that Sinclair exaggerates though to help make the novel have more meaning, is that these political machines were not always as corrupt and wild as stated, there were some such as New York’s Tammany Hall organization, that was well structured and at times improved urban infrastructure, but this case is rare and more of an exception rather than the rule.9 However fortunate Jurgis was to have this position, his life always got worse, this is scene as a way for Sinclair to demonstrate