The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Book Review

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
 
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair succeeded very well in laying out the plight of the immigrants who were treated like slaves in the Chicago Stock Yards and Canning Houses during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The working conditions were beyond what you could imagine in hell and the Meat Packing Trust who controlled the industry only had once concern and that was making money.

The story centers around one Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkus and his families struggle to survive. Sinclair takes Jurgis through the long slow depths of despair as he learns just how corrupt The City of Chicago is in every area of life and how it's out to destroy him.

Sinclair takes all of Jurgis’s tragedies to the absolute extreme and eventually he becomes a broken and corrupt man who losses everything of value in his life.

The final remedy is where the book fails dramatically. Sinclair spends the last 2 chapters of the book spouting socialism as the answer for Jurgis and all the working men and women of that era. One of the final speeches by a Socialist Leader is a nonsensical diatribe that should convince any intelligent person that Socialism is a failed ideology that will never work.

What struck me immediately was the polar opposite view of his book compared to another piece of classic literature. The Jungle hailed collectivism as the answer and Atlas Shrugged preached individualism and freedom as the answer.    

Jurgis Rudkus and John Galt both had struggles and challenges to overcome but one thought of himself as a victim while the other believed in personal responsibility and the power of one. Galt’s example was a far better remedy to overcome the challenges in life than Socialism.

The Jungle as a piece of journalism about the abuses of labor was excellent but his conclusions and answers are the worse. No immigrant today should read this book because they’ll believe the only way to survive in the United States is to become a ward of the state. Upton Sinclair should have moved to Cuba, Russia or China then I’m sure he wouldn’t have been such a vocal supporter of collectivism. 

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