Only In Minnesota

That's right fools;

I don't have any school tomorrow.

"Why?" you ask?

Because it's too cold to go.

Which means that I'm not doing any homework/studying for finals tonight.

Poor grill.

Below 10 right now, and that's not even the wind chill.

One of the homework items on my agenda for tomorrow involves the final draft of an essay I have to write for my American Studies/English class. I just finished the book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It's a pretty famous novel written around the turn of the 20th century by an journalist who went undercover in Chicago's infamous Packingtown (pretty much where all meat in the US came from back then) and revealed all the disgusting processes the products went through before arriving at the dinner table (For example; the "inspector" letting cows and pigs with tuberculosis or cholera pass by into the slaughterhouses, people employed for the sheer purpose of sweeping up the waste from the floor and packaging it as "High Grade Lard", and a lack of forms of sanitation, forcing immigrant workers to wash their hands in the vats before eating...). He then published The Jungle which is a story about an immigrant family from Lithuania and all the hardships they go through. It was a pretty groundbreaking book that actually convinced then President Roosevelt to pass some acts and laws; one of which prohibited companies from putting chemicals into their products (that's right, there actually had to be a legit law against this). In the end, it ends up being this huge Socialism propaganda novel, but the first 2/3 really isn't too bad. It's not a book that I would choose to read on my own, but it was definitely easier to get through than most other assigned books.

However, critics suggest that although The Jungle may have been a successful book in terms of stirring up some new laws, Sinclair didn't necessarily write a literary masterpiece. Basically my essay was explaining whether I thought Sinclair wrote a success in The Jungle and explain why I thought so.

So this is my rough draft; feel free to critique; hell you don't even have to read it. If you don't want to go through the essay (it's sort of lengthy, sorry), you can stop now. I don't have anything else to say :)

Having fingers worn down by pickling acid, being eaten alive by rats, and ears snapping off; these all may sound like various scenes from a horror B-movie, but in truth, they are incidents that happen in Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel, "The Jungle." Any individual reading these situations would be horrified to find that people actually suffered through the same abominations, and this reaction is what the author is aiming for. The misfortunes of the protagonist, a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis, and his family coming to early 20th century Packingtown to make it rich all lead up to Sinclair's main goal in penning this book: opening the world's eyes to the difficulties and unfairness common in the life of a newcomer. Critics may complain about the lack of character development and dialogue in The Jungle but in the end, it achieves author Upton Sinclair's main purpose of informing the public about the mistreatment of immigrants working in Packingtown, the unsanitary conditions that food went through before arriving at the kitchen table, and the solutions that Socialism brings to the corruption of the United States.

Being an immigrant in America is hard enough with the language barrier, cultural shock, and the abandoning of any past life in another country. The Jungle illustrates these difficulties quite vividly throughout the book, making the reader more sympathetic to the protagonists with every heavy blow. Before Jurgis even steps onto American soil, he is presented with the first of many trials dealt to him simply because he is from a different country. On the ship from Lithuania to Ellis Island, "-there was an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got them into a trap with some officials, and cost them a good deal of their precious money," (Sinclair 24). Unfortunately, the Rudkus and Lukoszaite family come across other income sucking schemes such as the too-good-to-be-true "house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling" (Sinclair 46) which magically transforms into a quickly built, flimsy 15 year old structure built on top of a landfill that continually attracts flies. Not only are the living conditions lower than sub-par, but the meat packing factories in which they toil for 10 hours a day, presents many difficulties to the characters' mental and physical health. To pay for the growing rent, Jurgis finds work in the most villainous of all areas in Packingtown: the fertilizer plant. This is the location where, "-they dried out the bones, -and in suffocating cellars where the daylight never came you might see men and women and children bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die, every one of them, within a certain definite time" (Sinclair 135). The abuse that Ona suffers at the hands of her boss, Connor, leads to her breakdown in which she experiences, "- fearful nervousness...; she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping, and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside herself and hysterical, and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright" (Sinclair 148). These scenes deftly paint the image that Sinclair wants us to see: one of a vulnerable immigrant family being forcefed unfortunate events and cheating schemes by a greedy forces. The reader quickly realizes how arduous the life of an immigrant can be. Others may claim that so much unluckiness could never befall one family; but in reality, wouldn't even one of the obstacles that Jurgis and his family must face, be especially wearisome, to anyone?

The great detail that is put into the despicable system of processing meat also leads to the The Jungle's success. Stories where, "- the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men with great forks speared it out and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet they set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever, and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat-" (Sinclair 64) and descriptions of, "-two thousand dollars a week hush money from the tubercular steers alone, and as much again from the hogs which had died of cholera on the trains, and which you might see any day being loaded in boxcars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana, where they made a fancy grade of lard" (Sinclair 101), angered civilians and even the Presdient alike when these preposterous claims were proven to be true. What Sinclair writes about easily explains why, "-the 'embalmed beef'... had killed several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards;" (Sinclair 102). Sinclair once stated, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," which is obvious by the actions taken after the book's publication. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which strictly forbade the selling of any tainted products and increased inspection of manufactured products, was passed almost directly because of Upton Sinclair's muckraking. This in turn leads to increased reform and laws towards protecting the health of the consumer. In this way, The Jungle has influenced American society more than most other books, either directly or indirectly.

However, the author's passion for Socialism and its beliefs manage to come through strongly in the novel. Sinclair builds up all of Jurgis' pain and suffering until the impoverished immigrant discovers the wonder and the understanding of the Socialist party, after which all hardship gradually strips away. Members of the organization are treated fairly and even called, "comrade." "For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness, and here, suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set him upon a mountaintop, from which he could survey it all," (Sinclair 337), he feels that he has finally found a place where he is an equal. Good fortune seems to follow Jurgis soon after he joins the Party; he finds a job at a hotel under the management of, "-the kindest hearted man that ever lived, and the liveliest..." (Sinclair 340) and he learns to read and complete his education. The contrast between Jurgis' previous life in the factories and his life after joining the Socialist party is quite stark and makes the reader really see the positives of Socialism.The book seems to lose its main character in the end and turns instead to the "-harvest fields of the future, to which millions of happy men and women come for a summer holiday, brought by special trains, the exactly needful number to each place! And to contrast all this with our present agonizing system of independent small farming, - a stunted, haggard, ignorant man, mated with a yellow, lean and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling from four o'clock in the morning until nine at night" (Sinclair 366).

Although it is often said that Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle is not a literary masterpiece, it is not fair to simply judge its success based off of flowery language and thought provoking dialogue. In fact, this novel does the job that it was written for; it informs the public about the conditions that immigrants had to live in, exposes the disgusting process of meatpacking, and glorifies Socialism. Based on these three points, Sinclair has made a great success with The Jungle.

Note: If you didn't notice, I get tired towards the end so I sort of just pulled the conclusion out of my ass... and I need better transitions.

Okay, be the worst critics you can possibly be!