The Jungle

3 Pages 810 Words

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is the story of a Lithuanian family that immigrates from their home city in Lithuania to the city of Chicago. The novel begins with the strong description of a wedding in which Ona Lukoszaite and Jurgis Rudkus are united in Holy Matrimony. The two of them then move to Chicago, to live their American dream. Soon after the wedding, Ona and Jurgis have many great debts to pay due to both the wedding, and a large debt that Ona’s father left them after he died. Due to Jurgis’s large size and strong will he found a job in Chicago within only a half an hour of waiting in the unemployment line. Back in the newlywed’s hometown of Lithuania, Ona and Jurgis’ family anticipated a move to America.

America uses the image of the “American Dream” to lure immigrants to this land of opportunity. The family desperately desires higher wages and true freedom. For months and months, Jurgis works very hard to pay for the families travel to Ona and Jurgis’ new hometown, Chicago. When the family finally makes it to America, their funds are very low. They met with a well off man named Jokubas Szedvilas who placed the family in a run down youth hostel. Jokubas takes the family to the meatpacking factory. He makes jokes about the sanitation of the operation (due only to the lack of quality of the meat). The family finds an advertisement for a housing complex that is very cheap. They talk to a real estate agent and they go see the housing complex. The houses aren’t as big and luxurious as they are pictured in the advertisement, but the price is right. The real estate agent swindles them, and they are pulled into the contract.

Sinclair emphasizes the corruption of upper class society during this era. Jurgis’s father, Dede Antanas, is promised a job by a grubby worker, but only if he pays that worker one third of his wages. He takes the job despite the disgusting working co...