111 pages • 3 hours read
Upton SinclairThe Jungle
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1905A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Family House
The house that the Rudkus-Lukoszaite family purchases in Packingtown embodies the promise America tacitly extended to immigrants throughout its history. This promise includes the upward mobility and independence afforded by home ownership, access to new and innovative luxuries like running water, and room to start a family. The house initially symbolizes much of this to the characters themselves. Jurgis and Ona in particular invest a great deal of emotion in the house, tightly associating it with their future together as newlyweds: “They were going to be married as soon as they could get everything settled and a little spare money put by; and this was to be their home—that little room yonder would be theirs!” (61).
However, as time passes, the hollowness of these aspirations becomes clear. The house itself is literally not what it was billed as, having simply been given a fresh coat of paint to conceal its age and shoddy workmanship. The latter results in unexpected expenses, but the house also becomes a financial drain in other ways. At the time they purchased the home, the family didn’t know they would be required to pay interest and taxes over and above the monthly mortgage, and they quickly find themselves struggling to keep up with what they owe. They are evicted while Jurgis is in prison, and the house is resold to yet another struggling family. Ona and her unborn child die shortly afterwards—an event which, coupled with the loss of the house, effectively marks the end of any dreams of domestic happiness. Thus, the house is emblematic of the rot underlying the American Dream. As Sinclair portrays it, America is not a country where anyone can build a better life through hard work and determination; it is a country in which predatory companies exploit the dreams and labor of the working classes, leaving them worse off than they were before.
The Meatpacking Industry
Although The Jungle became famous largely as an exposé of the seamy practices of the meatpacking industry, Sinclair’s intention in writing it was much broader: He hoped to use the industry as a symbol of all that was wrong with turn-of-the-century American capitalism. Sinclair says as much late in the novel, describing the meatpacking business as “the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed […] the spirit of Capitalism made flesh” (354).
Several factors make meatpacking effective in this role. For one, the violence involved in the work of slaughtering tends to create an atmosphere of “ruthlessness and ferocity” (354), in much the same way that unregulated capitalism pits workers against one another in their struggle to earn a living and survive. Relatedly, the incentive companies have to debase their products in order to increase profits mirrors what Sinclair portrays as the morally corrosive effects of such a system—for instance, its tendency to make female sexuality another commodity to sell, or the corruption of the democratic process by powerful economic interests. In addition, the mere fact that the meatpacking barons have become fabulously wealthy by controlling the manufacture and availability of a human necessity—food—is in and of itself an indictment of capitalism, according to Sinclair.
Most notable of all is the brutal efficiency of assembly-line slaughter. The meatpacking companies have structured the butchering process in such a way that no time or raw material is wasted, even at the expense of the animals’ or workers’ well-being. Just as companies “use everything about the hog except the squeal” (36), they also extract the maximum amount of work possible from their laborers, to the point of ruining their health if not outright killing them
Animals, the Natural World, and Evolution
The parallel Sinclair draws between the livestock slaughtered in the meatpacking factories and the people who toil there reflects the broader importance of animal imagery to the novel. At its most basic level, the motif speaks to the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. By treating workers as mindless and disposable, by forcing them to think constantly about securing material needs like food and shelter, and by rewarding cruelty and selfishness, the system reduces humans to an animalistic state. As the socialist speaker in Chapter 28 says: “[Y]ou, working men, working men! You have been brought up to it, you plod on like beasts of burden, thinking only of the day and its pain” (342-343).
The novel’s animal imagery also relates to its depiction of capitalist society as a kind of wilderness, specifically a “jungle.” Here, for instance, is how Sinclair describes Jurgis’s plight after attacking Connor and losing his privileged position with the local party bosses: “He was crippled—he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost its claws, or been torn out of its shell” (315). In passages like this one, Sinclair draws on the language of social Darwinism, the application of the theory of natural selection to human civilization. Typically, proponents of the theory advanced it as a way of justifying different kinds of social inequality—like that which is produced by capitalism or imperialism—on the grounds that inequality was the natural result of some people being better “adapted” than others. The idea also bears some resemblance to earlier accounts of free markets—like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations—as being governed by something akin to the laws of nature. Although these arguments typically suggested that free-market capitalism benefited all sectors of society, they similarly depict it as a “natural” and unchangeable fact of human existence.
This is not Sinclair’s position. While he depicts his characters as locked in a struggle for survival, this state of affairs is neither natural nor inevitable, but rather engineered by the owner classes for their own benefit. This realization is key to Jurgis’s conversion to socialism, since it implies that the existing economic order can be changed.
To the extent that The Jungle frames human society as subject to natural laws, it depicts these laws as favoring the development of socialism: “It was a process of economic evolution, [the speaker] said, and he exhibited its laws and methods. […] The workers were simply the citizens of industry, and the Socialist movement was the expression of their will to survive” (366).
