The novel I chose to look more in depth at was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I came across this book from my bio ethics class where we talked about the poor conditions in the meatpacking industry. Before reading this book, I expected it to be more factual information about the process of the meat industry and how the FDA came about to improve these qualities. That expectation soon came to a halt once I started reading this book because it followed a character and his life through this time. It focussed more on his experience in New York as an immigrant that had subtle meanings to the actual problem at hand which kind of disappointed me. When following this character through his journey, it became boring at parts that seemed to be drawn out to convey the life of the immigrant. While following the main character (Jurgis Rudkus), I became bored reading about his family and their day to day life. It began to get better when he decided to try and boycott against the bosses at work. “One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights. He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the butcher-helpers’ union came to him a second time, he received him in a far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this of the men—that by combining they might be able to make a stand and conquer the packers” (Sinclair, 52). After this I was beginning to get excited again thinking this is where more information of how the workers overthrew the bosses and created change in the industry. Sadly the expectations yet again got the better of me and soon let me down as I kept reading. The book continued to follow Jurgis’s life and his ups and downs through this time period. As I got used to finally following his journey, one key part stuck out to me where I felt bad for him and his outcome where I became more intrigued about his future. The part where a higher up boss (Phil Connor) was taking advantage of the immigrant workers where he did the unthinkable. Phil Connor, one night found Jurgis’s wife Ona and raped her. He soon threatened her saying that he would blacklist her whole family if she had told anyone (The_Jungle). The near future, Jurgis could tell something was wrong when Ona confessed about what had happened. This led Jurgis on a rampage for justice and ended up changing his life forever.
PLOT SUMMARY:
“Jurgis Rudkus marries his fifteen-year-old sweetheart, Ona Lukoszaite, in a joyous traditional Lithuanian wedding feast. They and their extended family have recently immigrated to Chicago due to financial hardship in Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). They have heard that America offers freedom and higher wages and have come to pursue the American Dream.
Despite having lost much of their savings being conned on the trip to Chicago, and then having to pay for the wedding—and despite the disappointment of arriving at a crowded boarding house—Jurgis is initially optimistic about his prospects in Chicago. Young and strong, he believes that he is immune to the misfortunes that have befallen others in the crowd. He is swiftly hired by a meatpacking factory; he marvels at its efficiency, even while witnessing the cruel treatment of the animals.
The women of the family answer an ad for a four-room house; Ona, who came from an educated background, figures that they could easily afford it with the jobs that Jurgis, proud Marija, and ambitious Jonas have gotten. While they discover at the showing that the neighborhood is unkempt and the house doesn't live up to the advertisement, they are taken in by the slickness and fluent Lithuanian of the real estate agent and sign a contract for the house.
However, with the help of an old Lithuanian neighbor, they discover several unexpected expenses in the contract that they must pay every month on time, or else face eviction—the fate of most home buyers in the neighborhood. To meet these costs, Ona and thirteen-year-old Stanislovas (whom the family had wished to send to school) must take up work as well.
While sickness befalls them often, they cannot afford not to work. That winter, Jurgis's father, weakened by exposure to chemicals and the elements at his job, dies of illness.
Some levity is brought to their lives by the arrival of a musician, named Tamoszius, who courts Marija, and the birth of Jurgis and Ona's first child. However, this happiness is tempered when Ona must return to work one week after giving birth, and Marija is laid off in a seasonal cutback. Jurgis attends union meetings passionately; he realizes that he had been taken in by a vote-buying scheme when he was new to Chicago, learns that the meat factories deliberately use diseased meat, and furthermore that workers frequently come down with ailments related to their dangerous and unsanitary work.
Work becomes more demanding as wages fall; the working members of the family suffer a series of injuries. Amid this hardship, Jonas deserts the family, leaving them no choice but to send two children to work as newspaper boys. The youngest child, a handicapped toddler, dies of food poisoning; only his mother grieves his death.
After recovering from his injury, Jurgis takes the least desirable job at a fertilizer mill. In misery, he begins drinking alcohol. He becomes suspicious of his pregnant wife's failure to return home on several nights. Ona eventually confesses that her boss, Phil Connor raped her, after which, by threatening to fire and blacklist everyone in her family, he managed to coerce her into a continuing sexual relationship.
Jurgis furiously attacks Connor at his factory, but half a dozen men tear him away. While in prison awaiting trial, he realizes it is Christmas Eve. The next day, his cellmate, Jack Duane, tells him about his criminal ventures and gives him his address. At trial, Connor testifies that he had fired Ona for "impudence" and easily denies Jurgis's account; the judge dismissively sentences Jurgis to thirty days in prison plus court fees.
Stanislovas visits Jurgis in prison and tells him of the family's increasing destitution. After Jurgis serves his term (plus three days for his inability to pay the fees), he walks through the slush for an entire day to get home, only to find that the house had been remodeled and sold to another family. He learns from their old neighbor that, despite all of the sacrifices they had made, his family had been evicted and had returned to the boarding house.
Upon arriving at the boarding house, Jurgis hears Ona screaming. She is in premature labor, and Marija explains that the family had no money for a doctor. Jurgis convinces a midwife to assist, but it is too little too late; the infant is dead, and with one last look at Jurgis, Ona dies shortly afterward. The children return with a day's wages; Jurgis spends all of it to get drunk for the night.
The next morning, Ona's stepmother begs Jurgis to think of his surviving child. With his son in mind, he endeavors again to gain employment despite his blacklisting. For a time, the family gets by and Jurgis delights in his son's first attempts at speech. One day, Jurgis arrives home to discover that his son had drowned after falling off a rotting boardwalk into the muddy streets. Without shedding a tear, he walks away from Chicago.
Jurgis wanders the countryside while the weather is warm, working, foraging, and stealing for food, shelter, and drink. In the fall, he returns to Chicago, sometimes employed, sometimes a tramp. While begging, he chances upon an eccentric rich drunk—the son of the owner of the first factory where Jurgis had worked—who entertains him for the night in his luxurious mansion and gives him a one-hundred-dollar bill (worth about $3000 today). Afterward, when Jurgis spends the bill at a bar, the bartender cheats him. Jurgis attacks the bartender and is sentenced to prison again, where he once again meets Jack Duane. This time, without a family to anchor him, Jurgis decides to fall in with him.
Jurgis helps Duane mug a well-off man; his split of the loot is worth over twenty times a day's wages from his first job. Though his conscience is pricked by learning of the man's injuries in the next day's papers, he justifies it to himself as necessary in a "dog-eat-dog" world. Jurgis then navigates the world of crime; he learns that this includes a substantial corruption of the police department. He becomes a vote fixer for a wealthy political powerhouse, Mike Scully, and arranges for many new Slavic immigrants to vote according to Scully's wishes—as Jurgis once had. To influence those men, he had taken a job at a factory, which he continues as a strikebreaker. One night, by chance, he runs into Connor, whom he attacks again. Afterward, he discovers that his buddies cannot fix the trial as Connor is an important figure under Scully. With the help of a friend, he posts and skips bail.
With no other options, Jurgis returns to begging and chances upon a woman who had been a guest to his wedding. She tells him where to find Marija, and Jurgis heads to the address to find that it is a brothel being raided by the police. Marija tells him that she was forced to prostitute herself to feed the children after they had gotten sick, and Stanislovas—who had drunk too much and passed out at work—had been eaten by rats. After their speedy trial and release, Marija tells Jurgis that she cannot leave the brothel as she cannot save money and has become addicted to heroin, as is typical in the brothel's human trafficking.
Marija has a customer, so Jurgis leaves and finds a political meeting for a warm place to stay. He begins to nod off. A refined lady gently rouses him, saying, "If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be interested." Startled by her kindness and fascinated by her passion, he listens to the thundering speaker. Enraptured by his speech, Jurgis seeks out the orator afterward. The orator asks if he is interested in socialism.
A Polish socialist takes him into his home, conversing with him about his life and socialism. Jurgis returns home to Ona's stepmother and passionately converts her to socialism; she placatingly goes along with it only because it seems to motivate him to find work. He finds work in a small hotel that turns out to be run by a state organizer of the Socialist Party. Jurgis passionately dedicates his life to the cause of socialism” (The Jungle - Wikipedia).
Condenced Plot:
Jurgis is this Lithuanian immigrant that came to New York with his family seeking a better life and newer opportunities. During this time it was difficult for immigrants to find sustainable work due to monopoly bosses. These bosses could control everything leading to poor working conditions and low working wages. The system was severely corrupt where they could sweep workplace injuries under the rug like nothing happened. Jurgis found this out quite fast and tried adjusting to this change. Following Jurgis’s life, he experienced a workplace injury that resulted in him losing his job to a healthier worker where it put a strain on his family. Once Jurgis was better he was able to find work at another place but was very miserable seeing the difference in pay between the workers and the bosses. Jurgis decided to join the other workers and form a boycott to try and make it better for fellow workers struggling. Jurgis was threatened by the bosses due to the boycott and was threatened by being black listed. Later in New York, one of Jurgis’s bosses Philip Connor took advantage of Jurgis’s wife and raped her. She was threatened by Philip Connor where if she told anyone, her husband would be blacklisted. Jurgis soon found out about this and took matters into his own hands. Jurgis ended up in jail after assaulting Philip Connor. His actions led him blacklisted and his family poorer than before. Jurgis was released from jail and soon reconvened with his family. His wife Ona soon passed while giving birth where Jurgis lost two people he loved that day. Having lost everyone, Jurgis soon took to a life of thievery and using substances to cope. Jurgis lost everything in his life and struggled getting back on track. After consulting with fellow friends and family, Jursgis took to a life of socialism and worked on spreading his life journey.
ADAPTING THE PLOT:
One key part in the plot I would like to see get changed is if Ona never got raped by Philip Connor. The reason why I chose this crucial part in the plot to be changed is because the result of this landed Jurgis in jail and being blacklisted. The outcomes that followed due to his actions trying to get justice for his wife distinctively led to their downfall. When Jurgis was in jail the family had to pay off the debt and became more broke than what they already were. Having no money they were evicted from their home into the slums and forced to live in worse conditions. Ona was pregnant and because of the lack of funds at this time they could not afford a midwife soon enough to save the baby or her. This put a big toll on Jurgis where he was resenting the world and compensating with alcohol and drugs. The only thing that tried to keep him motivated is knowing that his son needs a father that supports him. Later in the plot the domino effect soon continued where Jurgis’s son had an “accident” at work where he died in the mud of a cattle pen. Having everything stripped away from Jurgis, he had really no reason to live and was going through the motions ending up to low life of thievery. I am not sure of the possible outcome of Jurgis if he did not end up fighting Philip Connor for what he did to his wife. The one thing I would hope for in replace to this altercation is for karma to punish Phillip Connor or for the right people to hear about it and have them do something. The idea I had was if Jurgis did not go to jail he was still focussed on his work supporting his family. Having the other child that did not make and his son and wife still alive. Instead of Jurgis drowning his sorrows away in alcohol, he would be focused on unifying the workers from other factories to join the boycott against the bosses and get them to fold into their demands. This idea to keep Jurgis back on his path before this horrible event happened would have shown a faster end result of what he and others have been trying to accomplish long ago. I think this alteration in the plot could lead to many more possible endings depending on the writer who writes it.
I think that plot adaptation has two key elements to make this a great concept. The first is the author conveying an important message that has a good amount of detail for the readers. The second is the reader’s imagination and looking more in depth of the plot with how things turn out. When I think of this, the reader’s imagination can alter the true plot and create a whole new story. An example of this is in the marvel world where they bring in the idea of multiple universes that all have different outcomes. I think this is a cool skill to learn and to embrace as a reader because our imagination is everything.
Work Cited
Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, April 4). The jungle. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
The jungle – cloudfront.net. (n.d.). https://d1lexza0zk46za.cloudfront.net/history/american-documents/documents/usinclair-+the-jungle-1906.pdf
Attribution Statement
The image featured is the front cover of the book showing the cattle pens and where Jurgis son has died. The Jungle by UPTON SINCLAIR – Penguin Books New Zealand
