During their arrival in the New World, the family’s difficulties parallel the problems they confront in their new life in America. The hardship of immigrants is the central theme of The Jungle. The enormous quantity of bribery and corruption in Packingtown contributes to the situation. For the immigrants, there are so many obstacles that the pleasure of the marriage inevitably leads to despair the following working day, just as their enthusiasm for the New World has shifted from optimism to discouragement. Sinclair investigates how genes, environment, and background all influence fate throughout The Jungle since the fundamental essence of capitalism traps the lower class.
The meaning of foreign words and phrases is given through background, allowing the immigrants a feeling of sincerity while also making the readers sympathetic to them. Sinclair requires appealing to people in order to show how capitalism damages them and their families; by framing capitalism as a problem, he can portray socialism as a solution. His story is full of contrasts; for example, capitalism is dishonest from the start compared to honest, hardworking people.
Because Sinclair employs an all-knowing narrator, the narrative structure of The Jungle is aimed to affect readers stylistically. Sinclair wanted to depict reality as he thought it to be; as a result, his realistic fiction represents the actual world and tries to attract the reader’s attention by portraying people who appear to have real lives independent from the text. As a result, one of the essential elements is that the narrator discusses what the characters say, think, and do. Another noteworthy feature is Sinclair’s usage of the second-person pronoun “you.” “You might complain,” he writes when discussing the bar tab payment, for example (Sinclair). Sinclair utilizes the plural form of “you” to connect the reader to both the individual and the scenario. Thus, the author switches from the third to the second-person point of view and from the past to the present tense, disrupting the unity of time and place.
Work Cited
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Gutenberg eBook, 1906.