Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York. Doubleday, Jabber & Company: February 28, 1906.

Through all the hype, I decided to pick up this book from both recommendations and disgust of the plot. The book is a fictional account of an immigrant in a meatpacking city. The book was written in defense of immigrants and the honest man while it seems to lean towards a communist reach.

The book is centralized in the city of Packingtown, a city devoted to the meatpacking industry in the mid-west. The city has been a hub for all sorts of immigrants, from the Irish to the Slovaks and the Lithuanians. The book follows Jurgis, a strong youth from Lithuania with a will to work, who is trying to make enough money to establish his marriage to his sweetheart. Sinclair tends to create the most disgusting of all settings throughout this book, including extreme evils such as inhumanity, corruption and grotesque images, showing the capitalistic world in all its beauty.

Grandmother Majauszkiene is my favorite personality in the book. She is one Lithuanian who has been able to last in Packingtown longer than all the immigrants that have had to flee. She provides the ideal position, a woman whose son was able to actually pay off the house sold to them, and now lives by herself. Though she would seem to wish to help Jurgis and his family, she seems very cold to them, and represents a very sardonic, biting character.

I honestly did not like this novel. The whole text was a long whiny rant. Sinclair must have had a bad experience in America, because he really has nothing good to say. Between the corrupt lawyers who work with real-estate agents to swindle poor people to the unforgiving companies, Sinclair really makes America look like a fate even worse than hell. The redeeming qualities of this book, including great plot development and realistic characters, are trumped by Upton's lack of humane images.

This book really puts Capitalism and Racism into a clear light. THe book shows the clear evils of Capitalism, in the extreme cases of bloody jobs and severely unfair worker treatment, coincide with those of racism and a lack of acceptance towards immigrants. The attitude towards the immigrants in the book seemed very similar to those that are being expressed against those coming up from the border.

In another note, the book highlights the inhumane practices of the meatpacking industry, which must mean that Sinclair was supporting vegetarianism. I didn't really like how he portrayed the worst of the worst to make a point, but then again, those were different times.