The Jungle

The Jungle ( The Jungle ) is a socially critical novel by the American writer Upton Sinclair.

Sinclair was commissioned in 1904 by Fred Warren for the socially critical work. First, The Jungle was published as a serial in 1905 in the socialist journal Appeal to Reason; the first edition was in 1906 by Doubleday; Already in the same year followed by the first translation by H. zur mills under the title The Swamp; other translations followed about by I. Gronke 1974 under the title The Jungle.

This novel is about the exploitation of workers and the hygienic abuses in slaughterhouses and canning factories in the Union Stockyards of Chicago. With the example of a family of immigrants from Lithuania Sinclair illustrated the catastrophic effects of a dictated by profit delusion and corruption U.S. capitalism in the late 19th century.

The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, which occupies the archetype of the good-natured, inexperienced young man who loses his job after an industrial accident in a slaughterhouse.

This triggers a chain reaction that leads to the death of his wife, to the destruction of family ties and his own inexorable social and physical decline. After his imprisonment he became vagrants and temporarily forfeit the lure of Mobster his city.

At the end of him, however, results in an unexpected turn: Purely by chance gets Jurgis into a Socialist Assembly and experienced there in a sense his " enlightenment." From this point on, the novel becomes a veritable pamphlet with social demands and theses.

In his style, the work proves to be a mixture drastic social reportage with a perceived by some as a one-dimensional plot. As an indirect source for the currents of American social reformer at the beginning of the 20th century as well as a prime example of the so-called " muckraking novels" to which convenes today, for example, Michael Moore, this novel is also on display.

Documents

• Literary work
• Literature ( 20th century)
• Literature ( English )
• Novel, epic