The Jungle

A few years ago I posted Oil!, Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel about the oil industry that turned out to really be about socialism, and I said I would likely read Sinclair's best known book, The Jungle, someday. With Gallagan's shelf winding down (I've been saying this for a while, I know) I finally got to give it a chance. Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy it. The novel's introduction by Jane Jacobs details the book's main criticism- it's not quite journalism, but it's not very good as a piece of fiction either, and then claims that this doesn't really matter because most of all the book is above all else a very important work. For those who don't know, The Jungle exposed the horrors in Chicago's meat-packing industry in the early 20th century and inspired a major public outcry, causing Teddy Roosevelt to pass acts that eventually led to the formation of the Food and Drug Administration. This is all great, I mean how many books really enable social changes in their author's liftetime? But it doesn't make for all that interesting a read 100 years later. I suppose the story about the book is more interesting than the story in the book. Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus moves to Chicago in the early 1900's expecting to be able to provide for his family with his slaughterhouse job, but through all sorts of mistakes and unfortunate events the family ends up dirt poor and everyone needs to find a job. Things keep going from bad to worse as random members of the Rudkus family get sick, injured, and die, so Jurgis eventually flees the city to briefly live as a hobo. Being a hobo isn't all that great either, so Jurgis finally comes back to the city and ends up joining a Socialist movement, delivering impassioned speeches on the importance of labor unions. This all could have been very interesting I suppose, but it just didn't do much for me. For one, the characters here are all pretty flat and boring. This stands in stark contrast to Bunny and his father in Oil!, where it's no surprise a great movie was made from the source material. The Rudkus family's descent into poverty just didn't surprise me much either- I was expecting to be shocked at the working conditions Jurgis works in, but they were about on par with what I thought they'd be. Granted that's not a fault of the book, which is probably the reason I knew conditions were so bad in the first place; it's just another reason the book won't have nearly the same impact a century later. Finally, I just didn't like Jurgis much in the first place. I know we're supposed to sympathize with him, but randomly attacking people when he's mad and abandoning his family to be a hobo aren't really endearing qualities. Sure, he thought his family was all dead or long gone, but the guy still could have looked a little harder before up and leaving the city. His sudden rise through the ranks of the Socialist movement towards the end of the book felt pretty unnatural as well- throughout the book he's been an uneducated man who relies on his physical strength, but suddenly he's this great orator? I dunno, it all just felt like a rushed version of Bunny's similar transition in Oil!. I shouldn't lay it on so heavy here though- The Jungle seems to be Sinclair's biggest bombshell and he should be lauded for his ability to start a flurry of activity for labor laws and health conditions, but if you're looking for a book that you'll enjoy reading you might want to look towards his later works.