Literature Network » Jack London

"No ties except those of blood": class, race, and Jack London's American plague.

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From: Papers on Language & Literature
Date: 20030922
Author:Raney, David

Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (1906), a book littered with references to disease--tuberculosis, cholera, spoiled meat and (Sinclair's larger point) the "monstrous disease" of industrial capitalism--permits himself the phrase "the germ of hope" in referring to the prospects of his browbeaten meatpackers (332, 86). It is the lone instance, though, of any word related to growth and carrying a positive connotation. By the turn of the century, the word "germ" was fast losing its ancient agricultural sense and becoming solely a descriptor for dangerous microbes. In 1850, the ...

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