Introduction
Upton Sinclair aims to describe capitalism’s evil nature as dehumanizing, brutal, and destructive. The society in the book by Sinclair is similar to the jungle, where humans remind the wild animals who are ready to kill and eat each other to survive. The story is centered around the personality of Jurgis Rudkis, who immigrates to the United States from Lithuania to make his life better. The narration features his attempts to provide for the family and guarantee them a decent level of life, but these actions do not yield positive results. Sinclair states that the capitalistic economic order makes people struggle for survival and lose their morality, which makes it the most destructive thing in the contemporary world.
Discussion of the Novel
The author was inspired by the events from his life, which makes the story realistic. While residing in Chicago’s meat-packing neighborhood, Sinclair conducted a study by looking into the employees’ factories and homes. Based on his research, he created the fictional book “The Jungle,” which tells about the Rudkis family, Lithuanian immigrants who moved into Chicago’s Back of the Yards (Sinclair 7). The family arrived in the United States expecting a respectable existence but soon understood this dream was impossible. The main character, Jurgis, takes his beloved woman, her family, and his father to the United States for material well-being. They experience a series of disasters resulting from fraudulent loans, which causes them to become impoverished and force them out of the poor ghetto home they had planned to purchase.
Even moral people with positive motivation are forced by capitalism to become brutal, ruthless, and predatory if they want to live. For instance, when Jurgis comes to the United States for the first time, he tries to succeed as a trustworthy employee at the meat-packing facility. He begins drinking, abandons his remaining family, becomes involved in offenses, and works for the politicians he despises on the meat-packing plant after being repeatedly humiliated. The dehumanizing effects of capitalism are prevalent throughout the novel, turning people into robots or animals who can be exploited for gain. Ostrinski, another immigrant, exclaims: “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!” (Sinclair 436). Jurgis attended the strike of workers who wanted to improve their labor conditions, where he was brutally beaten. As a result, Jurgis has neither political freedom nor decent working conditions, and his job reminds him of slavery. This image of the capitalist society is radical but still realistic.
Sinclair articulates his perspective on the destructive nature of the capitalist society with the position the novel’s main protagonist develops based on his experience. All immigrant family members have to find a job in these circumstances, but not all can cope with this pressure. Hard work that is not regulated by the unions that protect the rights of the proletarians in the capitalist society leads to the protagonists’ moral and physical destruction. Child labor and prostitution are forced activities that ruin the human soul, and overcoming this trauma with time is impossible. The peculiar detail is that most people in the capitalist society agree that everyone should try to survive using all methods, and these ways to escape from poverty are not rare and unique.
Jurgis Rudkis understands that the capitalist economy dehumanizes individuals, and his family members cannot overcome its harmful effects. His position is the logical conclusion the working person can make in the circumstances that affect his life. It is possible to illustrate the perspective on the capitalist society as the jungle where human dignity is not worthy of a single dollar with the following lines from the novel:
“Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars” (Sinclair 231).
This excerpt shows that people are dehumanized in the capitalist society, and their feelings and individuality are unnecessary. They are perceived as working machines, and the community and the economy do not pity them. Empathy does not allow the business to earn money, which means that no regulations can protect the proletarians from injustice in the workplace.
The struggle of the working class person is hopeless from the beginning because there are no real opportunities for gaining money and status in the capitalist world. The novel’s protagonist states: “The rich people not only had all the money, but they also had all the chance to get more; they had all the knowledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down” (Sinclair 388). Jurgis understands that no one wants to share their resources with others, and the competition for survival is high. These details make the society similar to the jungle, as the title supposes, and it leads to the situation when only the most vital predators can survive, while the vulnerable people will be eaten.
The peculiar detail is that people continue trying to compete for their well-being all their lives because they believe in their potential success. This idea is typically described as the American dream, representing the United States as a country of opportunities for active and industrious individuals. It is possible to illustrate this assumption with the subsequent lines from the novel: “The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie” (Sinclair 107). Jurgis and his family immigrated to the United States, dreaming about the possibilities the capitalistic economy could provide them. In reality, this type of economy exploited them without giving them anything. As Jurgis states, “To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going” (Sinclair 21). These lines mean that not all individuals can and want to understand that all their dreams and attempts were in vain. It will destroy the motivation to live and deprive them of the meaning that made these people act for years. The truth about the harmful effect of the capitalistic system on humans is depressing, and not all people have the courage to acknowledge it.
Current Issue Analysis
It is possible to make parallels with the problem of not affordable housing in the United States, making people pay loans their entire lives. The critical detail is that most Americans can only pay the housing loan after retirement because they need to buy a bigger house in a more prestigious neighborhood if they receive a better job. As a result, their loan increases, and they have to pay even more money to banks for their house. When the loan is complete, people are usually retired, their income is comparatively low, and they do not need a prominent place because their children moved from them. It leads to the situation when the person is overworked for decades, thinking about the moment they will finally buy their house and become happy. Though, when this moment comes, they cannot feel satisfied because the price of this house is excessive.
Another peculiar detail connected with the current situation with housing and loans for it is the gentrification of the neighborhoods. This notion refers to when more affluent people from the middle or upper middle class move into the district where poor and working-class people live (Demsas 1). The community starts changing, and the rent for the houses in this place increases significantly (Demsas 1). As a result, people with lower income who used to reside in the neighborhood are forced to move to another site where the rent is lower because they cannot afford the new prices for their homes (Demsas 1). In other words, working-class, immigrant, and poor people lose the opportunity to live in their homes because they cannot compete with other members of the capitalist society.
It is necessary to mention the concept of the residents’ inequality that is typical of the capitalist society and the similar economic model. From the capitalistic point of view, there is nothing wrong with inequality because it shows that the person managed to succeed, and the wealth they acquired is the reward for their efforts (Demsas 1). The motivating factor makes people try harder to achieve better results at work, start a business, and find their place in life.
The critical detail, in this case, is the comparatively low level of upward social mobility in the United States. It supposes that a person from the working class needs opportunities to become a representative of the middle class. In other words, the immigrant who comes to the United States has to work in an unqualified job in unregulated conditions because there is a high competition of people with similar backgrounds. Physical work and low pay do not allow these people to give a decent education to their children, who will also work on low-payed and unskilled jobs, even though they are not the first generation of Americans (Demsas 1). These factors create a cycle of poverty that is extremely difficult to end without the governmental support of social initiatives that are not typical for the capitalistic model.
The situation with gentrification is similar to the problem Sinclair describes in the novel. He narrates the hardship that people from working-class families who recently immigrated to the country experience. Contemporary immigrants face the same issues when arriving in the state, and they typically receive little support from society or the government. Even though the situation with the working conditions and exploitation of people is less horrible compared to the reality described by Sinclair in “The Jungle,” the metaphor still can be applied to the capitalistic economy. People continue to struggle for their existence, hoping to improve the conditions of their lives and pay the loans for the houses for many years, but in the end, they lose.
Conclusion
Sinclair uses the story and the worldview of the main protagonist Jurgis Rudkis to convey the message about the destructive and dehumanizing essence of the capitalistic society and economy to readers. These assumptions reflect the situation with affordable housing in the United States, a significant concern for most people in the capitalistic country. People work all their lives to pay for the loans they take, dreaming of buying the house where they live, but this dream has yet to come true due to numerous circumstances. At the end of their lives, they usually have to move from their house after finally paying the loan and move to a small flat or a healthcare facility for older people. These individuals spend years chasing their dream of buying and overworking for the house.
Therefore, “The Jungle” aims to expose the flaws in American capitalism. In his book, Upton Sinclair demonstrates how the capitalist system oppresses the working class, grants a small group of wealthy people unchecked power, and compels individuals to behave solely in their best interests without considering the pain of others. The jungle depicts the numerous vices and inequities the capitalist system brings, such as terrible conditions at work, child labor, corruption within the government, prostitution, alcoholism, dishonesty, and violence—the harsh working circumstances subject employees to fatigue, trauma, body damage, and even mortality. People need to compete for these deplorable jobs, bring their children for employment, and engage in prostitution to live. In a capitalist society, lying and deceit are accepted as the standard.
Works Cited
Demsas, Jerusalem. “The Real Villain in the Gentrification Story.” The Atlantic, 2022. Web.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Simon and Schuster, 2004.