[review] The Jungle (Upton Sinclair, 1906)

If you haven’t already, read The Jungle.

Macro, it’s a meditation on the destitute poverty of a helpless but affectionate Lithuanian family who emigrate to Chicago during the second Industrial Revolution. It's about the graft and bribery and cruelty of a machine called the meatpacking industry that grinds out dollars indiscriminately from gaunt men, vulnerable woman and terrified children.

Micro, Sinclair presents us with Jurgis, who undergoes an incredulous journey from the cattle killing beds to the county jail, political parlor meetings to saloons and brothels. He witnesses horrors unseen in the urban US post-civil war and soon becomes predictably jaded and desensitized. He enjoys bouts of wealth and security, but each time inevitably encounters some obstacle that once again severs his (and our) quickly-developed attachment to comfort and drops us back down without pity into the depths of despair. Security is an illusion.

Sinclair's writing is impassioned and vivid, rife with pungent (and frequently sickening) details. The novel’s tone is tense and graphics gory. His approach to the material is comprehensive and committed. Like any object of muckraking reveal, the book was ignored by those in power while its subjects suffered in silence.

It’s probably indicative of my pampered American upbringing that I was somewhat disappointed by the ending, which provides no deliverance to our sympathetic protagonist other than a hopeful stride towards the uniting of the worldwide proletariat under Socialism.

The book reminds me of Dickens and is undeniably a book of activism, though the propaganda isn’t outright until the end. Until then, the story is plot-driven.

The plight of Jurgis and the European migrants who ventured to the “free world” only to be locked into wage slavery by ruthless executives and politicians will stay with me for a long time. Thankfully, business in the US has become more humane since those days. All kinds of people are pursuing different models of impact in the for-profit realm. Some are helpful, some aren’t, but that the “Jungle” flavor of exploitation is all but eradicated indicates progress.

To be sure, the book scared the living daylights out of me, but if a novel's supreme ambition is to catapult the reader into a different world, Sinclair achieved this objective with flying colors.