The Jungle
...or a month after an unfair trial. After being released Jurgis finds out that his family has been evicted and is living in a boarding home. Just as he returns home he witnesses his wife in premature labor. She and their unborn second child die and Jurgis disappears on a drunken bender. Eventually he finds a job at a steel mill and starts to feel hope for a while. Then his son dies. Jurgis abandons his remaining family and lives as a hobo. Jurgis is arrested for assaulting, and is imprisoned for it.. After being released Jurgis is forced to live on charity. Jurgis searches for his family and finds out that his wife’s cousin, one of the people who wanted them to move to America for a better life, is addicted to morphine and works as a prostitute to support the family. This is the main low point in Jurgis’s life. The American dream has brought him nothing but ruin and hardship. Jurgis joins the socialist party after a speaker fills him with hope at a rally. His life takes a turn for the better once he becomes a socialist, he finds a job at a hotel that is owned by the socialists and is reunited with his family once again. At the end Jurgis attends a socialist rally in which the speaker sums up the point behind the book: if more people convert to socialism then they could take over Chicago. During the late 19th century, the industrial sectors of society rapidly expanded. Corporations emerged, and the captains of industry created ,major industrial empires that drastically changed the face of American business. Although many opposed the large businesses when they hurt individuals, Americans generally favored industrialization. This era was known as the Gilded Age. In the Gilded Age even the common man shared in the American desire to gain wealth through the new industrial economy. To the common man, the Gilded Age was a chance to make something in life( economically). This especially applied to immigrants that immigrated to America. Upton Sinclair shows this view of the common man through Jurgis and his family. Their dream was to make money and make it hear in America. Economic opportunity was the Gilded Age to the common man. In the novel there are radical movements that take place. Radical movements are socialists rallies, these rallies are described in the book. Jurgis meets socialists and begins to think that wealth should not be concentrated in the bonds of capitalist because they exploit the common worker. Socialism becomes appealing to the working class. In Socialism workers do not have to work under oppression of filthy capitalist. Workers are forced to live in slums and always carry the burden of debt among them due to the reality witch is that there being used and don’t make any money. They are forced to work for many hours and in return do not receive any benefits from the grueling work they have to put up with, in witch there is no say in. The entire family is forced to work. There is no escaping it, no matter how young or small they are. The workers cannot rely on the government because they are capitalist bats draining all the money from them. Socialism applies to the workers because they can only depend on each other. The workers are aware of the evilness that is capitalism. Socialism is appealing to the common worker because they know it only leads to positive changes and lifestyles. The workers would no longer have to live to work, but instead work to live. During the Gilded Age the politics in America were corrupt. During the period, Presidents generally had middling power, and big business developed a mutual and corrupt alliance with politics, a situation called machine politics. Regional political party bosses such as Boss Tweed in New York blatantly rigged and bought elections, and made a profit in the process. The abuses of machine politics led eventually to reform, most notably the 1883 Pendleton Act, which created the modern political civil service, complete w...