The Jungle Paper

27 March 2011

Book Critique~ “The Jungle”

The author~ Upton Sinclair~

September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968

Sinclair was an author born in Baltimore Maryland and wrote more than 90 books in both fiction and non-fiction. His passion was to write about the social and economic conditions of the early 1900’s. Sinclair published five novels between 1901 and 1906, but none of them generated much income. Late in 1904, the editors of the popular socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason sent Sinclair to Chicago to examine the lives of stockyard workers. He spent seven weeks in the city’s meatpacking plants, learning every detail about the work itself, the home lives of workers and the structure of the meat business. And from this- his novel “The Jungle” came to

the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had been given an advanced copy of the publication. It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that passed the1906 Government Acts such as “The Pure Food and Drug Act” and “Meat Inspection Act.”

Upton went on to establish the Helicon Home Colony, a socialist community in New Jersey. But it burned down the following year. Sinclair remained committed to his social issues. He moved to California in 1915 where he ran for public office but was unsuccessful. Also ran for governor as a Democrat in 1934! During the 1940s, he returned to writing fiction. He won a Pulitzer Prize for” Dragon’s Teeth” a book about Nazi, Germany. Sinclair and his wife moved to a small town in Arizona in the 1950s. After Kimbrough died in 1961, Sinclair married again. His third wife died in 1967, and Sinclair died in 1968. He is most remembered for this novel “The Jungle” even though he published over 90 books!

An overview of the book~

This classic novel details the despicable conditions rampant in the meat packing industry in Chicago during the early 1900s. It focuses on poor Lithuanian emigrants (a family and friends) lured to the US with...