The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is one of America's controversial novels. I finished reading it at around midnight last night, and I want to record my thoughts about it here.
First published in 1906, it's a fictional account of a family's hardships while trapped in the industrial meat-packing district of Chicago. Sinclair worked for a couple of months under-cover in that district before he wrote the book.
The story begins with the wedding of a young couple, immigrants from Lituania newly settled in Chicago. We later learn about the hardships this family has endured and is still enduring. Having come to the United States for a better life, they have quickly found that life is much more complicated than they anticipated, and more, they have found themselves trapped in poverty like many thousands, or perhaps millions, of other immigrants, blacks, and women.
Throughout the novel we see the main character, Jurgis, a large, strong man, as he is slowly broken down and left destitute. We see others die from lack of healthcare. We see a strong and optimistic woman reduced to drug addiction and prostitution. We see all kinds of suffering that is common in poverty-stricken nations even today. Anyone who has spent much time in poverty, or who has at least keenly observed poverty, will recognize the characters in this book.
The last several pages of The Jungle are dedicated to a long socialist credo, which reminded me, at least in form, of the John Galt sermon at the end of Atlas Shrugged. Frankly, after walking with the protagonist through his horrendous (if sometimes self-imposed) circumstances, I don't want to be preached to.
Scenes that take place in the meat-packing plants are gruesome and sickening. According to the articles I read about The Jungle, there was a public outcry after the book was released, not on behalf of the poor, but for food safety. Sinclair's socialist narrative did not have the effect he was looking for.
Sinclair's prose is beautiful, even at his young age (he was still in his 20s when he wrote it). However, his protagonist's relationship with his wife, Ona, seemed unconvincing and wooden most of the time. It is difficult to write about something one has not experienced. It takes great care to get it right, and I don't think he took great enough care.
Furthermore, Jurgis isn't a very likeable character. I'm not the kind of reader who wants a perfect protagonist -- not at all -- but I want to find at least one aspect of his or her character perfectly likeable. Even in morally questionable fictional characters, like Dexter on the series Dexter, they are given enough likeable qualities to make fans want more episodes and seasons of the show -- and Dexter is a murderous sociopath. Jurgis is not a murderous sociopath, but it seems the only character trait he has going for him is a strong work ethic. That just doesn't keep people wanting more.
The portraits Sinclair writes for us, of the dingy district, the gruesome work of mass animal slaughter, the political corruption, the street life of the average resident in those areas, and the suffering they endure...those are excellent. He uses his protagonist to walk us through all these scenarios. Sinclair, a journalist by nature, found a genius way to write an engaging and very long opinion editorial: a novel! In fact, the novel was published as a serial in a socialist newspaper before it was compiled into a novel.
My great disappointment with The Jungle was the socialist scrawl at the end. I have already noted my comparison with the end of Atlas Shrugged. However, when I read Atlas Shrugged, with the long infomercial at the end, I wasn't too surprised, because Atlas Shrugged is not something I consider high-level literature. With The Jungle, due to the quality of the writing, I expected better from Sinclair. I was expecting, I suppose, something that would settle the book's narrative into my emotional core...I'll explain what I mean...
...Sell me a symbol of the ideology, instead of the ideology itself. I've come to expect that from literary classics. Grapes of Wrath is filled with a kind of socialist propaganda, but when I got to the end of that book, I placed it on my lap and stared at the wall in awe for a long time. Nobody had lectured me at the end. The narrative was the lecture, and the symbols were a hundred-fold more effective than a sermon. Books like Moby Dick and Middlemarch were monsters to slog through, often leaving me wondering why -- why! -- are these considered literary classics? Then, near the end, came the catharsis, that whole staring at the wall thing I do, whether in awe, or horror, or whatever emotion the book has left me with. But The Jungle left me without that, and I feel a bit cheated.