Preview

Sinclair and Dante: Packingtown, Chicago and the Nine Circles of Hell

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2573 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sinclair and Dante: Packingtown, Chicago and the Nine Circles of Hell
Sinclair and Dante: Packingtown, Chicago and the Nine Circles of Hell
Allie Sheppeck

Mr. Cosme

English 10

12 March 2012

Sinclair and Dante: Packingtown, Chicago and the Nine Circles of Hell

Chicago in 1906 was considered ‘hell.’ Is that a coincidence, or did Sinclair get inspiration from Hell itself? The workers of Packingtown may have felt that they were experiencing Dante’s Inferno and the punishments with it. Sinclair noticed this as well, as he made many allusions to Dante when describing their lives and the environment.

When thinking of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, many immediately picture the grotesque meat that was being packaged and sent out to the families all over the state and country. That is because of the paragraph about the meats, where Sinclair writes of the spoiled meat used as sausage; the many chemicals used to change color, flavor, and odor; and removing the bone from bad smoked hams, where a white-hot iron was placed instead. The bad meats were sold under false pretenses, and most of the time it worked. Boneless hams were odds and ends of pork, California hams were shoulders and knuckle joints, and skinned hams were made from old hogs (142). That passage so angered President Roosevelt that he had the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act passed, which had harsher laws regarding the meats that could be used. “‘I aimed at the public’s heart,’ said Sinclair, ‘and by accident I hit in the stomach’” (McCage). He said that because he was instead hoping to expose the poor working conditions and hopefully promote socialism. The workers in Packingtown were given very low wages; not even eighteen cents an hour (Sinclair 44)! They were treated very poorly and were given no sympathy for sickness or death. For example, Ona was dislike by her forelady after asking for a holiday to get married (112). Although it was not allowed to happen, bosses would blacklist workers, keeping them from ever getting a job (208). The working



Cited: Aligheri, Dante. The Inferno. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: Signet, 2009. “Dream symbolism: mountains.” Dream Dictionary. n.p., n.d. Web. 23 February 2012. "grafters." West 's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. 2008. The Gale Group 9 Feb. 2012. Kolko, Gabriel. The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967. Print. McCage, Crystal. "Sinclair, Upton." In Anderson, George P., Judith S. Baughman, Matthew J. Bruccoli, and Carl Rollyson, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition: Into the Modern: 1896–1945, Volume 3. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom 's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. (accessed 25 January, 2012). Novels for Students. Marie Rose Napierkowski and Deborah A. Stanley, eds. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale, 1999. 366 pp. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Bantam Books, 2003. Print.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a three-hundred and seventy page, descriptive and touching political fiction critiquing the social and economic inequality of work in the meat-packing industry during the early 1900’s. The book follows the life of Jurgis Rudkus, a poor immigrant who, along with his many family members, move to Chicago to live the "American Dream". However theses Lithuanian American dream are quickly crushed as work in the meat-packing industry has only given them intolerable levels of hardship such as death, injuries, scams, rape, and injustice. The Rudkus innocence and desperation causes many frustrations and…

    • 97 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is a book centered around the events of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. This book features a dual storyline following the events of Daniel Burnham and his involvement in the architectural design of the World’s Fair, and Dr. H H Holmes, a man using Chicago and the World’s Fair to his advantage in a killing spree. Though these two story lines do not interact with each other directly, it serves the great purpose of contrasting the very good that the very evil that came from the World’s Fair. This book is demonstrating two completely…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Not only were the working conditions intolerable, but the processed meats were full of rat feces, rat poison, and dead rats. Sinclair described how workers ignored the conditions of the produce and the meats were still processed even though they were full of diseased fecal matter and poisons. This statement alone proves that factories had no standards and thus strengthens my argument that immigrants were not valued during industrialization. The following quote from Sinclair's novel, The jungle, shows that society of the late 1800's/ early 1900's conformed to social status. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer, this statement is supported by the following quote ": the rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Like the Book Dante’s Inferno it symbolizes that Dante went through hell with Virgil just to meet Beatrice. He went through which was horrible disgusting difficult. But at the end he met Beatrice and was happy well not really but he did feel a lift off his chest that he finally reached and after going through all of that. Dante imagined something cool his imagination was wonderful and creative. Hell is horrible he went through the 7 Deadly Sins. Which was Pride which meant excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity. Then there’s Envy which is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation. Third one is Gluttony which is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires. Fourth is Lust which…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The word Hell, or in Italian, Inferno means the abode of Satan and the forces of evil. It is where sinners suffer eternal punishment. Dante was exiled by Pope Boniface, which led him to write this poem, Dante’s Inferno. He wrote the poem because he was exiled and he had nothing left in his life, so he just wrote to express that he was betrayed by his own country, not him betraying his country. Since he was betrayed by his own country, he became a nomad and has been a beggar ever since.…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Conservatism Movement

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages

    From the mid 1940s to the early 2000s, the conservative movement was at its apex in United States history. The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents by Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie contains documents all pertaining to the conservative movement. Out of the collection of the various documents in The Rise of Conservatism, five stand out to be the most important in detailing what the conservative moment was and what the basic beliefs and goals were. The documents are as follows: From The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, From the Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley Jr. publisher’s statement on his founding the National Review, Richard Nixon’s Labor Day Radio Address, and Ronald Reagan’s nomination acceptance speech.…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inferno Literary Analysis

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages

    If given the opportunity to view Hell and its inhabitants, would you feel sympathy towards those you have known while they were alive, or would you feel as though they deserve the punishment they have been given? One such man who wrote a book about such an encounter is Dante Alighieri. Dante opened up The Inferno with a tone of sympathy and grief; however, his attitude toward the souls he encountered became increasingly opposite to that, as if he felt the souls deserved this. Some souls he encountered he had known, and some he had merely heard of. Dante did not pass judgment upon all of them, but many he did.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dante’s Inferno is a symbol of Dante’s relationship with the Church during his life, and though it was written after the Black Plague, it has many examples of the issues humanity had during the plague.…

    • 614 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The geography of each hell and its denizens changes drastically through out the decades, as literature is spread across the world. The earliest piece that I chose to examine was Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, which dates back to sometime between 1265 and 1321. I also chose Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1564-1593), Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1945) to show the transformation over time. The final piece of literature that I picked, and also found was most compelling, was Robert Olen Butler’s Hell (2009). While all these works of literature relate to the topic of Hell, the time era in which each was written greatly influenced the outcome of each story, as well as the overall moral.…

    • 1593 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In The Inferno Dante brings up real people from history. Dante uses the real people as examples of what a person must do to enter a specific portion of hell. For example, when talking about the sin of rage and aggression, Dante brings up the Ancient general Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus was a great commander who battled the Romans and was as Dante puts it was “The scourge of Sicily.” I enjoy Dante dredging up history and scraping the bottom for more minor people…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dante's Inferno

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages

    However, that was William Blake’s interpretation of the story and how he felt to describe it. William Blake’s interpretations of “Dante’s inferno” were, in my opinion, not what Dante imagined because Dante talked about the nine circles of Hell being dark and dreary. William Blake’s made the story seem bright and colorful instead of making the…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Lesbian Media Timeline

    • 3660 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Server, L. (1994). Over My Dead Body: The Sensation of the American Paperback, 1945-1955. San Francisco: Chronicle…

    • 3660 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    By the end of World War II, no cohesive conservative force existed in American politics. Rather, various diverse semi-conservative ideologies existed in relative isolation from one another. Conservatism was a weak and unfocused philosophy without a unifying voice. The Right side of the intellectual landscape was so bleak that “the American Conservative has yet to discover conservatism.”…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In many ways, Dante’s Inferno can be seen as a kind of imaginative grouping of human evil that is addressed into nine circles that descend into the depths of hell. At times it is very questionable the way Dante wrote the circles, wondering why they were created the way they were. For example, a sin in the Eighth Circle of Hell, bribe, would be considered worse than a sin in the Sixth Circle of Hell, murder. To understand this, one must realize that Dante followed very strict Christian values during the time that this book was written. Throughout his decent it is clearly indicated by the way each sin is described in the circles. While descending the sins only get worse according to what the beliefs if god were back then. His moral system prioritizes…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inferno - Dan Brown

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “Inferno” is the underworld as described in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem “the divine comedy”, which portrays hell as an elaborately structured realm populated by souls trapped between life and death. All artwork, literature, science, and historical references in this novel are real emphasizing Brown’s intelligence in which way he relates these true facts to his thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you’re done with the book!…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays