Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, was not what I expected going in. Upon reading some articles and doing a little research I discovered that my pre-reading expectations were not uncommon. They were in fact the result of the American reaction to the novel from all the way back to it's original publication. The Jungle is most commonly known-especially among those who have not read it- as an expose of the horrors of the Chicago meat-packing industry around the turn of the century and what types of despicable and disgusting things were being fed to the general public. Sinclair had hoped to strike a chord with the public and show the plight of the poor immigrants who were locked into horrible jobs and tricked at every turn into remaining poor, eating poor, and being worked into the ground as fast as possible so that other, newer, younger immigrants could come in and follow in the same path. He wanted to give detailed descriptions of how these scenarios forced families to send all of the women and young children to work to scrape just enough to get by between the entire family. He wanted to uncover the local government's corruption and the union's useless struggle to fight for the common workers. Well...the book does all of this and it really drags the reader into the gutter. These being hard times for the average American, currently, I found this book to be one of the ones that reminded me of how much worse it could be and was for many of my Irish ancestors. In the test of time, however, the plight of the immigrants is not the main enduring theme. Instead, the theme that made The Jungle an almost instant best-seller and has remained the novel's calling card for over a century now is the mistreatment of meat and meat products by the Chicago stock-yard conglomerates. The use of chemicals and food coloring to trick consumers into eating beef and pork infected with tuberculosis. The pay-offs and head turnings of so called health inspectors. The overlooking of workers falling to their death in the rendering tanks and being turned into "Durham's Pure Beef Lard." The truth about "head cheese." Oh, just typing this makes me sick. Why have these themes triumphed over Sinclair's portrayal of the follies of our capitalist society? Well, other than the fact that capitalism forged our rise to power and socialism is the work of the DEVIL, I mean Obama, I mean the DEVIL!!! (That message brought to you by Fox News)... the book helped bring about new legislation, which ultimately led to the Food and Drug Administration. Mr. Sinclair was still rightfully unpleased by even this development due to the fact that the inspections and cost lay on the hands of the government and therefore the American taxpayers and not the packers themselves. Large scale food industry mishaps also remain relevant today due to documentaries like "Super Size Me," and "Fast Food Nation," which show a lack of true development and progress in the by-product laced beef of the American diet. Still, the many students of my generation who didn't read this one are missing out on the harsh tale of the odds stacked against relatives and ancestors of ours who came to this great nation as recent as a hundred years ago. Our grandparents and their parents may have and most likely were subjected to some of the same circumstances as Jurgis Rudkis and his family. Along the way I pulled for Jurgis and felt all of his torment. The lies, the struggles, the deaths, the impossibilities. When he broke away on his own I thought he might finally make it. False hope welled up inside as he took to hobo-ing it. Alas, the roller coaster only continued to show him highs and lows and in the end Sinclair rode the brakes down a never ending hill until I damn near fell asleep reading a socialist speech spoken to a small crowd in a Chicago hotel. Still, The Jungle is a must read today just as it was back in '06 and I am very glad to have added it to this project. I was most surprised by the socialist manifesto at the end, which left me feeling a little baffled and the story open-ended, but it isn't the first time I've finished a novel and thought: "Oh, so I guess novels don't always have to have an ending. Sometimes they are just a cross section of random history and fiction that kind of reel out of the author until he or she decides to stop on a whim and call it a day."
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