Sinclair's "The Jungle" let me down hard.

[TexaninNihon]

I just finished reading The Jungle by Sinclair. I loved it up until the last 6 or 7 chapters, when the whole story lost it's intensity and the parts of the story were pushed out of the way to make room for what was so obviously Sinclair's anti-capitalist angst. It just turned into a Socialist propaganda piece.

I thought that the first two-thirds of the book were so good, though, and that is why it was so upsetting.

Has anyone else read this? Liked it? Would you recommend any other books by Sinclair? :x

[nome1486]

I agree. The Jungle could have been a good story, but it was longer than it needed to be and started meandering toward the end. However, the book had a profound impact on health standards in the US; Sinclair's descriptions of the stockyards prompted Theodore Roosevelt to push for the Meat Inspection Act, which required federal government inspection of all meat shipped across state lines. The Food and Drug Administration was also formed at that time to preserve food safety in the meat-packing industry, I think mainly due to this book.

[nome1486]

Just an interesting fact about how literature positively affected society--but maybe you already knew it :D

[eightbagels]

I wanted to start a discussion about Upton Sinclairs ideas of Capitalism vs. Socialism as portrayed in his novel, The Jungle. I found it very facinating that the main character, Jurgis, and his family were from Lithuania. These were country people who came to America to work and earn a living. It is here that they experianced the devestation of greed. Sinclair argued that Socialism was the solution to the monopolys of giant buisiness's and how they effected the lives of those who worked for them. Does anyone see the paralell's between Jurgis's time and ours today? Consider that in the novel, familys were forced to give the ultimate to survive because of the corporations that controlled them. Is it possible that today many 3rd world countries are forced to live like the families in the novel because of how we as American's live today? This novel has compelled me to become interested in socialism. What do you guys think?

[eightbagels]

Yes....toward the end the conversation was a definite push for Socialism, but I figured it was because Sinclair wanted to clarify his message. It did take from the external plot, you are right.

[eji]

You could say the same for Ayn Rand and quite a few of Huxley's novels ("After Many a Summer" comes to mind). The problem arises when the author forgets he's telling a story describing one aspect of a larger issue and not describing a larger issue to which the story is incidental. The trick -- though I can't speak from firsthand experience -- is maintaining enough distance between the two to avoid the slips into finger-wagging and sermonising. But emotional or ideological involvement in the larger issue can make that difficult.

I have to confess that I've never read anything else by Sinclair, and don't intend to unless I'm promised a very long, idle life.