Is "The Jungle" by Upton Sinnclair really a city novel?

Table of contents

1. Introduction

2. Plot synopsis of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

3. Analysis
3.1. The city at the turn of the century-various authors’ viewpoints describing the city as portrayed in The Jungle
3.2. The title of The Jungle
3.3. Packingtown - a metaphor
3.4. Other city aspects examined (advertisements,electric lights)

4. The city image represent in The Jungle

5. Conclusion

6. Literature

Introduction:

The question being discussed in this paper is whether or not Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle can be regarded as one of the great city novels in American Literature. It is a rather difficult question that made me think of a painting I discovered when I was searching for literature about this topic. It can be seen at the front page of this paper. The painting is called Ich und die Stadt and was painted by an artist called Ludwig Meidner in 1913. It appeared along with other paintings of city impressions in a book carrying the title of Meidner’s painting, Ich und die Stadt. The painting is supposed to be depicting a person and his city, but is that really what the viewer can see? Is it not a mere chaos that is presenting itself in this piece of art? There are houses, telegraphing poles, chimneys, patches of green, smoke, streets and in the front we can see a face. It is looking at us, the observer of the painting, in a little provocative way. The interpreters of the painting used a quote by Meidner himself that can be found in his book Im Nacken das Sternenmeer (1918). To express his thoughts about this face in the painting, he said: “Was peitscht mich denn so in die Stadt hinein? Was ras ich verrückt heerstraßenlang?…”^[1]. An this is what most people wonder about the city, why is this place like a magnet? The painting is drawn with sudden strokes of the paintbrush, reflecting the impulsiveness of the city, the speed, which is part of the city. The painting does not express any calmness, there are no places to rest the eye on. What I also found striking is that there is no symbiosis between human being and the city, they are in the same painting but do not seem to be forming a unit.

The thought I had when I looked at the painting was that for me it represented Jurgis and Chicago. Jurgis as the lost face in the front of the painting being put in the centre of attention without even wanting to be there and in the back, Chicago a city of chaos. Jurgis, the face, seems to be wondering if he should really dive into that chaos; maybe this is the moment where he last looks back on what he is leaving behind before going in the city.

And is that painting really depicting a city or is it depicting the person, wanting to be in the city? And is The Jungle really depicting the city or is it depicting what the city does to its inhabitants? Or is that the same?

In this paper I will focus on Sinclair’s description of Chicago in The Jungle. I will be examining different viewpoints of authors who have been describing what cities are like at that time. The chosen examples that can be linked to the impression the reader gets when looking at The Jungle are mostly negative for the image portrayed in the book are mostly negative. I will focus on choice of the title as well as on the city within the city- Packingtown. There I will direct my analysis on the way human beings and animals are treated there. Last but not least there will be a concentration on the way object related to the city at the turn of the century, are portrayed in The Jungle.

When searching for secondary literature on the topic I encountered some difficulties. There were numerous books about authors like Dreiser, Norris or Dos Passos and how their books treated the city theme but I could not find books about Sinclair and the city. But there were numerous books about Sinclair and socialism. The interpretations therefore mainly focus on articles and interpretation guides and on my understanding of what I read.

2. Plot synopsis of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle:

The novel begins with the wedding feast of Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite. They are immigrants from Lithuania and now live in Packingtown, the stockyard district of Chicago. The feast begins exuberantly and ends in disappointment for most of the guests are drunk and exhausted and have left the feast without having paid the traditional money on which the newlyweds can start life on. Jurgis and Ona start their life together on debts. Still Jurgis has faith in his America and believes that everything will be all right, he “will earn more money [he] will work harder”.^[2]

Jurgis met Ona about a year and a half earlier at a fair in Lithuania. Ona was only fourteen and Jurgis already about twenty-five. He had fallen in love with her at first sight but Ona’s father, a rich man, would not let Jurgis marry his daughter. The next time they saw each other things had changed drastically. Ona’s father had died and they had lost most of their money, Ona’s attachment to her stepmother, Teta Elzbieta, still kept her from marrying Jurgis. Then Jonas, Teta Elzbieta’s brother, suggests immigrating to America for he had heard of a friend becoming rich in a city named Chicago. Jurgis believed in a future for him and Ona in America being the place “of which lovers and young people dreamed”^[3]

So they set out- “twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children and Ona, who was a little of both”^[4] Once in Chicago they have already been cheated out of most of their money. Jonas’ friend Jokubas Szedvilas, a poor delicatessen owner, first acts as their guide. He finds the party a place in a filthy lodging house and shows them around in the stockyards.

On the first day the strongest and healthiest of the group: Jurgis, Jonas and Marija, Ona’s cousin set out to get a job. Jurgis becomes a sweeper on the killing beds at Brown’s, one of the meat-packing companies. Jonas gets a job pushing a truck at Durham’s, Brown’s rival, and Marija works as a can painter. Dede Antanas, Jurgis’ father, only gets a job after agreeing to pay a man 1/3 of his wages. The party decides that they can afford to buy a “new” house, using most of their savings as a down payment.

Jurgis starts discovering America’s dark side. Jonas and Marija had gotten their jobs because of the misfortune of others. Jurgis heard that in this job Dede Antanas has to shovel the remains of chemically treated meat into a truck headed for cannery and he saw that pregnant cows were butchered and their unborn calves were illegally mixed with other carcasses. They even butcher the cattle that died before reaching the slaughterhouse. Jurgis’ faith is even more shaken when he learns that their house is not in fact new but that there were four families that had already lost the house because they could not pay the monthly payments. He also finds out that there are hidden charges in the deed e.g. interest, insurance and taxes and so on that have to be paid as well.

The family decides that if they want to keep the house more members have to work. Ona gets a job sewing hams and Stanislovas, Teta Elzbieta’s oldest son who is fourteen, gets a job at a lard machine at Durham’s. Working this way, the family is able to save enough for Ona and Jurgis to get married decently.

All of them are back at work the next day being absolutely exhausted. Their married life is quite cheerless, the pressures are suppressing their spirits. Dede Antanas sickens and dies and they can not pay a funeral that won’t bankrupt them.

Winter in Packingtown is an agony. Homeless people who have spend the warm months in the country come to the city to look for work, so there is a constant fear of loosing the job because there are so many others to take it. Inside the plants, there is no heat just blinding steam in which many accidents happen. Many factories close down for they have produced enough during the summer. At lunch break the workers flood the surrounding saloons where they can keep warm and get a “free” lunch for a drink or two. Because Jurgis has Ona to think about, he does not drink like his co-workers do. Marija falls in love with a musician but they can’t afford to get married for Marija’s factory closed down. The general business slowdown means that Jurgis as well as the others get only about a half day’s paid work, though spending all day at work.

Angry about these conditions Jurgis joins a union and has all the other working members of the family join as well. He starts to learn English and finds out about the corruptive way of politics in the stockyards, earning two dollars for becoming a citizen and voting for the Democrats.

Jurgis family struggles through the second winter. Spring comes, with its flooding the streets and summer with an unbearable heat. Ona has a baby boy, who they name Antanas, and harms her health by returning to work prematurely. In their third winter in America Jurgis injures himself and is in bed for three months. In spring Jonas deserts the family and cuts their income about 1/3rd. Two of Teta Elzbieta’s boys have to work as well, they start to sell newspapers. Recovered Jurgis finds his old job gone and he can only find work at the fertilizer plant, the “place that waits for the lowest man”^[5]. This is when Jurgis can not stand it any longer and starts to drink. Ona is pregnant again, has depressions and fits of weeping. One day Jurgis finds out that she was being raped by her boss Phil Conner. Jurgis runs off, nearly kills Conner and is sent to jail.

Stanislovas once visits Jurgis during his month in jail reporting that Ona is sick, Marija injured and the family almost starving. Their only income is what the children earn. After Jurgis’ release he finds out that they have been evicted from the house they had struggled so hard to keep. The family is again living in the boarding house where they first lived. Ona is in labour and Jurgis persuades a midwife to help her through the pain but to no benefit, Ona and the baby die.

Because of his son Antanas Jurgis stays with the family and once more searches for a job. He gets one at a producer of farm equipment. His department closes after nine days and he is out looking for a job again. Thanks to a lady working for charity, he gets a job at a steel plant at the other end of town. When his son accidentally drowns, Jurgis turns his back on Chicago and becomes a travelling worker in the country.

In the fall he returns and gets a job digging a tunnel. An on-the-job injury puts him in the hospital and after he gets out he becomes a beggar. That is when he meets Frederick Jones, the drunken son of a rich meat-packing family. He brings him home and leaves his place with a full stomach and a 100$ bill. Jurgis asks a bartender to change the bill for him so that he can pay a boarding house, but the bartender cheats him and Jurgis looses almost all the money. Jurgis attacks the barman, is arrested and sent to jail.

Released Jurgis tries his luck with crime, tutored by his former cell mate Jack Duane, an educated gentleman who has been cheated by society. Jurgis learns how Chicago’s underworld and politic function. He returns to the stockyards as an undercover operative for the Democratic party of Mike Scully, Chicago’s most important figure. He succeeds in his task and is highly thought of by his boss. In summer the butcher’s union strikes and Jurgis gets a foreman’s job, taking bribes from his men, and beating up strikers for the packers. A second attack on Phil Conner lands him in jail again but due to his connection he gets out by paying a fee of 300$, all the savings he had on his bank.

Jurgis goes back to begging, where he meets and old friend who tells him where the family is. He tracks them down and finds out that Marija is a prostitute and drug addicted financing the rest of the family by her income. Stanislovas is dead, eaten by rats.

That night Jurgis walks into a political rally to keep warm. The emotional orator converts him to socialism and his life takes a new turn. He moves back to the family. He gets a job as a porter in a hotel owned by a socialist and devotes himself to socialism.

The novel ends on election day 1904 at a socialist party gathering. There he learns that his party made a strong showing and that the crowd should organize the workers because then “Chicago will be [theirs]”^[6]

[...]

^[1] Roters, E., Schulz, B.: Ich und die Stadt. p. 88

^[2] p. 19

^[3] p. 22

^[4] p. 23

^[5] p. 127

^[6] p. 346