Reviews

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

theag7's review against another edition

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This was...interesting. It's definitely going to help me always remember the Gilded Age, but I'm not a girl who adores reading about how dirt got mixed into canned meat...yeah, no.

yellowswagger's review against another edition

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5.0

I wouldn’t call the prose poetic, but the story feels so relevant today. Jurgis is so relatable with his mindset that he is healthy and if he just works harder he can make ends meet. Things have definitely gotten better for many since this book was published, but in so many ways things haven’t changed. It is the image of the exploitation of the working class from a birds eye view. I highly recommend this book.

daja57's review against another edition

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4.0

Jurgis emigrates from Lithuania with his family and the family of his bride-to-be near the start of the 1900s. They seek work in the meat-packing district of Chicago and are easy prey to the robber-baron capitalist practices of the time. Those who are lucky enough to find employment (including underage children) are forced to work in appalling conditions, for little better than zero-hours contracts. They are repeatedly cheated by mortgage brokers. Every sickness is a calamity, there being no health insurance and no sick pay. Misery after misery is inflicted upon them. Hunger, starvation, illness and death attend them Just when you think that things might be looking up a little, another hammer blow knocks them down.

If you want misery fiction, this is it. I naively expected that the book would pivot at the half-way mark when Jurgis goes to jail but there is still plenty of misery yet to come.

It is hugely realistic. The style is mostly objective reportage (the author worked for seven weeks undercover in the meat-processing industry). The final section of the book becomes a socialist tract. There are moments of Victorian melodrama ("she lay cold and still - she was gone - she was gone!"; Ch 19). In some ways it is in the tradition of Dickens's early novels such as Oliver Twist which exposed workhouses and Nicholas Nickleby which exposed private schools but this book is much harder-hitting and has correspondingly less romantic story-line.

It reminded me in many ways of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, a much less visceral novel set in the building trade in England; it too has socialist tracts at the end.

Warning: The Jungle contains anti-Semitic and racist remarks; its casual assumption of racist attitudes is typical of its time.

vex97's review against another edition

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1.0

DNF. I believe Sinclair seriously erred by writing a fictional story instead of an investigative journalism piece à la, for example, Karl Marx's description of horrible working conditions of 20th century English laborers. While Sinclair's descriptions of the inhumane working conditions and horrors of the meat packing plants were well-detailed and harrowing, the overall narrative story is not written well. Sinclair untactfully throws the protaganist Jurgis into every possible misfortune that a workingman of the early 1900's could experience. Over the course of the book, Jurgis' ordeals reach the point of ridiculousness and disbelief. The result is that instead of emphasizing with Jurgis and being emotionally moved by his suffering (and thereby more open to Socialist ideas), I was left thinking after each chapter: "Seriously? How hasn't Jurgis killed himself yet?" Furthermore, the book is too long—having the reader slog through 300+ pages of Jurgis falling into one tragedy into another with no respite makes for bad reading and diminishes the intended effect of the book as socialist propaganda. (And I provide this critique as someone who is quite open to socialist ideas.)

sincerelycalla's review against another edition

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4.0

was NOT expecting this total venture into socialism 

carsongomas's review against another edition

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inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

carrb1270's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

3.5

tiggerrd's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

3.0

pained_creations's review against another edition

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informative sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I enjoyed the beginning story of an immigrant family barely clawing out an existence in Chicago. It was insight. Lots of details of the corruption and abuse in the stockyards in the early 1900's.
The last few chapters were basically a socialist manifesto, and were hard to slough through. More of a political essay than a fiction story.

ec_newman's review against another edition

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4.0

I'm not a vegetarian despite reading this book, but I would understand why others would choose to do so after the mess of turn of the century meat packing factories. And I am not convinced that today, our food is much better. The plight of the Lithuanian family is horrifying, disaster and misfortune attack them and each one worse than the previous, so much so that it's hard to muster up sympathy half-way through the book because you're desensitized. The last few chapters are incredibly preachy about Socialism, in fact one of the speeches I thought if I could replace Socialism with God and a few other church words, it would pretty much be a sermon. I felt like the book lost its way in the end as it's not about the character of Jurgis anymore, but about the ideology, which makes sense when reading about Sinclair's life.

But for the story in me, I wanted more for Jurgis and the ending to his story. It's a great book, of course. Changed so much about America and I can't argue with its impact. I like the fact that it challenges everything said about America being a 'land of opportunity' and the parallel between the animals physically slaughters and the souls of the working men and women slaughtered. Truly, worth reading and probably worth reading more than once.