The Jungle and the Injustice of Banning Books

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair is not only a bestselling novel but also a significant piece of American history. Sinclair investigated the horrid and beyond insanitary conditions of the Chicago meat industry, and through The Jungle, Sinclair was able to expose this tendency to the public. This “muckraking,” a term used to describe the method by which American writers in the early twentieth century exposed corruption and scandals in business and politics through investigative journalism (Muckrakers), led directly to the institution of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

If The Jungle had been banned in America like it has been in several foreign nations (American), we might very well still be consuming the foul, tainted meat that Americans were consuming at the turn of the twentieth century. This is why Sinclair’s The Jungle cannot be banned; it is a direct threat to the innate freedom of man and a direct injustice to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Sinclair was an avid socialist, decided to publish The Jungle in the socialist newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, after it was rejected by five separate publishing companies for its socialist perspective. Sinclair revised The Jungle after its appearance in The Appeal to Reason, and re-released it through Doubleday, Page and Company on February 28th, 1906. The book became an immediate bestseller, selling more than 150,000 copies in its first publishing.

The Jungle is a work of fiction that follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus as he emigrates from Lithuania to the United States and gets a job working in the meat industry in the Packingtown district of Chicago, Illinois. Sinclair illustrates the life of immigrant Rudkus as he faces challenge after challenge after arriving in the United States. Sinclair describes the hardships of Rudkus and his continuous struggle against the capitalist American society, as well as describing the conditions of the Chicago...