The Jungle Essay, Research Paper

Poverty, drinking, and horrible meatpacking procedures are three of the major themes in the novel, The Jungle. Jurgis, the main character in the novel, suffers in life because of all the deaths in his family. All the deaths were inevitable, due to the conditions in Packingtown. The living conditions were poor. People were under paid, food was horrible, and the housing was poor. These few elements played a big role in the destruction of Jurgis’ family. There were many meat-packaging horrors and that was a major theme. One example is that people fall into vats. When someone fell in, no one would do anything and they wouldn’t care. Another thing is that people had to work in freezing conditions. Two members of Jurgis’ family were killed because of the horrible conditions in the yards. Dede Antanas was killed because of the pickle juice on the floor where he worked. At his work place, he would slop “the “pickle” into a hole that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever.” His feet were soaked in the juice everyday at work and soon the chemicals had killed him. The other family member that died because of the yards was Stanislovas. He was trapped in a storage room and rats ate him. The company also made deviled ham, which consisted of bits and ends of meat that couldn’t have been used. At the killing beds, if a cow didn’t die, people would run in horror because the cow would run around in muck. When this did happen, the head person would take out his rifle and start shooting. If this didn’t get a person hurt, the knives everyone was carrying would’ve. In chapter twelve, it starts up with Jurgis injured in bed. His injury symbolizes his life. His injury is described as “a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down and the pain still continued”. The sprain symbolized his life and struggle in America and the pain, which wouldn’t go away, symbolized his hardships in America. The family needed money so they made all their children leave school. Jurgis’ family represents all the immigrants who struggle in America and it shows the poverty level in Packingtown. Money was hard to find and everyone had bills to pay and they were all poor and had little money to live on. It was decided that Vilima, and Nikalojus were sent to the city to learn to sell papers. “Now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off even yet.” This is another example of the poverty level in Packingtown. Soon after, Kristoforas, Teta’s last child died. “Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export.” The meat was of poor quality and was unsafe to eat but it was still sold out to people. Jurgis’ family was poor and they only had money to buy the poor quality meat. This is one more example of the poverty level in Packintown. Because of the bad meat sold in Packingtown, it led to one more death in Jurgis’ family. Jurgis couldn’t get his job at Brown’s, so he went to get a job in the fertilizer plant out of desperation. After living in Packing town for two years, Jurgis family now has some knowledge on the Packingtown swindles. Jurgis had lots of troubles and he would resolve his problems to drink. Two days before Thanksgiving, Ona had not returned home and this worried Jurgis. The following morning, Ona had told Jurgis she stayed over a friend’s house. On Christmas Eve, Ona had not returned home again. Later, when he arrives home he asked Ona where she has been and she gave the same response as the first time. Jurgis knew she wasn’t there and he squeezes the truth out of her. To his amazement, he finds out she was sleeping with her boss, Conner. He then goes to the yards to find Conner and when he does, he beats the living crap out of Conner. “Jurgis, lunging with all the power of his arm and body, struck him fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward. The next moment he was on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.” This is how furious Jurgis was and then “In a flash he had bent down and sunk his teeth into the man’s cheek.” “He was dripping with blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his mouth.” His actions speak for his anger and his emotions were screaming. His rage ends with him getting knocked unconscious. Jurgis finds out that he has been charged with assault and battery. While in jail, Jurgis thinks about a lot of things including Ona, their financial position, and their home. He was to pay the bail of $300, but he didn’t have the money, so he was sentenced to jailuntil the trial. He was sent to jail with all his money, 15 cents. This showed how poor he was. While in prison, he met Jack Duane who he soon made an acquaintance with. At the trial, Jurgis admits to attacking Connors. The result of the trial was that he had to stay in jail for thirty days and pay the cost. When Jurgis gets out of jail, he heads home, and when he gets there, there was a new coat of paint on the house, and the trimmings around the windows were of a different color also. He then goes in and finds out that a new family had moved into his home. After seeing that this house was no longer his, he left and gone to Aniele’s house. He sees everyone inside, but he doesn’t see Ona and asks about her. He hears her scream from the attic and everyone pleads him not to go up. He agrees not to go up and then they set him out in search for a midwife. Jurgis then sets out with a dollar and a quarter in him pocket. This was all the money that the women had combined together. This scene also shows the poverty in Packingtown.

He sets out and finds a midwife and after bargaining with her, she follows Jurgis to the house. When they get back, Jurgis is sent out of the house for another time. This time he goes to a saloon. He didn’t want to think about everything so he goes drinking. This scene shows how drinking helps Jurgis escape temporarily from his problems. He has no money, but the saloonkeeper gives him a free drink and a place to stay for the night. The next morning he goes back and finds Ona dead. The poverty and condition of Packingtown both had a part in the death of Ona. They had no money so they couldn’t get the midwife any sooner, and the jobs at the yards didn’t pay them enough. Jurgis goes crazy so he goes to a saloon and starts drinking. He says the the saloonkeeper, “How much is the bottle? I want to get drunk”. Here is a perfect example of how he drinks away his problems. After realizing it wasn’t the end of the world, Jurgis heads back to the yards in search of work. He finds a job with a farm equipment manufacturer. This new job lifted Jurgis’ spirit, but in 9 days, the company closed down because they had enough supply of the machines. The family had little money and little Juozapas would beg for food and go through dumps. “There were hunks of bread and potato peeling and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite unspoiled”. The next day he was hungry and his mother gave in and let him go again. They were poor, and the food was good enough to eat, so she let him go back. She knew there was no way to feed him because they had no money. This shows the poverty and how poor they were. They couldn’t even feed their own children. Jouzapas meets a settlement worker and she finds a job for Jurgis at a steel mill. One day when he was going home, he goes in his house and finds out that little Antanas had drowned in the flooded streets. Because that most of the people in Packingtown were immigrants, city officials didn’t pay to much attention to the city’s condition, so the city conditions has once again killed one of his family members. Unlike Ona’s death, Jurgis didn’t resolve his problem to drinking, but instead, he hopped a train and left the city. When he reaches the country, he goes to a stream and bathes himself. He has now begun the life of a tramp in the country. He would wander the country in search to help farmers in return for food and shelter and possibly money. When farmers asked him to work full time, he would refuse. On his journey, he hides in the woods in one occasion and weeps because of the deaths of Antana and Ona. The cold weather forces Jurgis back into the city. When he gets back, he gets a job as a tunnel digger. He was injured on the job and was sent to the hospital and in the hospital, he spent his pleasantest Christmas in America. When he gets out, he goes drinking, typical of Jurgis. After he gets kicked out, he searches for another bar to stay. His stays in bars in later parts of the novel were because of shelter and not too much of problems because he had no one to worry about but himself. When he leaves that bar, the bar keep told him about a religious revival. As Jurgis arrives, “The evangelist was preaching “sin and redemption,” One day, Jurgis was in the streets and he was begging for lodging and the man he was begging was Freddie Jones. He was wealthy and his family owned one of the factories. Freddie took him home and gave him food and a grand tour of the place probably because he was drunk. He also gave Jurgis a hundred-dollar bill. When Jurgis leaves, he heads toward a bar and tries to change the bill, but instead the barkeep shortchanges him. Jurgis gets furious and beats up the barkeep and Jurgis went to jail for a second time. This time he was sentenced for ten days plus cost. While in jail, he meets his old friend Jack Duane. They decided to get together after they got out and when they did, they became partners in crime. Jurgis has become a mugger. While partners with Jack, he learns a lot about politics and how crooked the system was. He sees that business owners all bribe the policeman and all illegal activities were ignored, such as Sunday drinking and prostitution. He then became Mike Scully’s man at Durhams. He continued to work even through the strike. Later on, Harper tricks and deceives Jurgis. Jurgis attacks Conner again, so he was sentenced to jail again. Harper then says that he can bail out Jurgis for three hundred dollars, so Jurgis gives it to him. Harper pockets the three hundred because he said a good word for Jurgis and there was no cost. “He could no longer command a job when he wanted; he could no longer steal with impunity-he must hide by himself” . This was what it was like for Jurgis after his minute of the good life. He is living the life of the common tramp, like he did before. One day as he wanders in the city, he sees an old acquaintance, Alena Jasaityte. She tells him that she can’t help him but she can give him Marija’s address. He goes to find her and when he does, he finds out that she is now a prostitute and that she is addicted to morphine. She tells him where Elzbieta was living and she tells him about everyone and how they were doing. As he heads to find Elzbieta, he drops into a socialist rally. At the rally, he falls asleep and a lady wakes him up and calls him comrade. “Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder, or wild and meaningless uproar.” The speech was showing us how horrible the system was and how they were working for another man’s advantage. The novel ends there to show us what the system was like and how lower class people were treated and Sinclair tried to “hit their hearts but hit them in the stomach”.13