FREE ESSAY ON THE JUNGLE

THE JUNGLE

The Jungle - Chapters 14-17
Summary
The family knows all the dirty secrets of the meat-packing industry. The most spoiled of
meats becomes sausage. All manner of dishonesty exists in the selling diseased, rotten,
and adulterated meat to American households. The working members of the family fall into
a silent stupor due to the grinding poverty and misery of their lives. Ona and Jurgis
grow apart. Jurgis begins to drink heavily. He delivers himself from full-blown
alcoholism through force of will, but the desire to drink always torments him.
Antanas suffers all manner of childhood illnesses, but the measles attacks him with fury.
However, he reaches his first birthday owing to his strong constitution despite the
privations under which his family suffers. He is perpetually malnourished like the rest
of Packingtown. Ona, pregnant again, develops a bad cough and suffers increasingly
frequent bouts of hysterical crying. Winter arrives again, and with it comes the grueling
rush season. Fifteen and sixteen hour workdays are frequent.
Twice, Ona does not return home at night. She explains that the snow drifts kept her
away, so she stayed with a friend. Jurgis discovers that she lied about staying with her
friend. He wrangles a confession out of her. Sobbing hysterically, Ona confesses that,
Connor, a boss at her factory continually harassed her and pleaded with her to become his
mistress. Eventually, he raped her in the factory after everyone had gone home. He
threatened to arrange the firings of every wage earner in her household. Moreover, he
threatened to prevent them from obtaining work in Packingtown ever again. With these
threats, he forced her into accompanying him to Miss Henderson's brothel in the evenings
for the past two months. The recent snowstorms prevented Ona from returning home twice.
Jurgis storms to Ona's workplace. It takes more than a half dozen men subdue him before
he can choke the life out of Connor. Jurgis is arrested and taken to jail where old men
and boys, hardened criminals and petty criminals, innocent men and guilty men share the
same squalid quarters. Jurgis's trial date is set, and his bond is three hundred dollars.
Jurgis spends the Christmas holidays in jail, worrying about his family.
While Jurgis awaits his trial, he becomes friends with his cell mate, Jack Duane. Jack
claims to be an educated man from the East. His father committed suicide after his
business failed. Jack claims that a big company later cheated him out of a lucrative
invention. After his misfortunes, Jack became a safe-breaker. Before his trial, Jack
gives Jurgis his mistress's address and encourages him to seek his help should the need
arise.
Jurgis's trial is a farce. Kotrina and Teta Elzbieta attend it. Connor and several
witnesses testify that Conner fired Ona fairly, and Jurgis attacked him for revenge.
Jurgis tells his side of the story through an interpreter, but the judge is not
sympathetic. He sentences Jurgis to thirty days in prison. Jurgis begs for clemency
because his family will starve, but the judge remains firm.
In Bridewell, Jurgis and the other prisoners spend the greater portion of their time
breaking stone. He writes a postcard to his family to let them know where he is. Ten days
later Stanislovas visits to tell him that he, Ona, Marija, and Teta Elzbieta have all
lost their jobs. They are unable to pay rent or buy food. Marija is suffering blood
poisoning because she cut her hand at work. Ona lies in bed, crying all day. Teta
Elzbieta's sausage factory shut down. Stanislovas lost his job after a snowstorm
prevented him from going to work for three days. No one can obtain other jobs because
they are too sick and weak and because Conner is scheming to prevent them. Stanislovas
asks if Jurgis can help them. Jurgis has no more than fourteen cents to give. Kotrina,
Stanislovas, and the children earn money selling papers. Their only other income comes
through begging.
Commentary
Packingtown is full of predators. Connor, empowered through his criminal connections,
violates the marriage bond between Jurgis and Ona. No individual really has the power to
fight for themselves. Marija tried to fight for her full wages only to be fired. Ona
cannot afford to reject Connor's advances because he has the power to ruin her family.
The wage laborer is systematically crippled and silenced by the power structure enabled
by capitalism.
Jurgis's attack on Connor would be perfectly justified according to the values of the
American reading public. A man has violated his wife against her will. However, judges
are bought and sold by men with power and money, so Jurgis spends thirty-three days in
jail for his attack. Sinclair clearly means to charge capitalism with perverting the
American justice system. The judge cares little that his ruling means the difference
between starvation and security, albeit precarious, for an entire family.
Sinclair also charges capitalism with being anti- Christian. Christianity was and still
is a strong social force in American culture. Jurgis spends the Christmas holidays
separated from his family. Moreover, his time in jail leads to their eviction from their
home. Sinclair means to portray capitalism as a threat to fundamental American values
again.
The family suffers a slew of misfortunes following Jurgis's imprisonment. This clearly
marks the family's inevitable descent into run. Despite all of their best efforts to
provide greater opportunities to the next generation, no sacrifice by the older one is
enough. The odds are stacked too high against them. All of the able- bodied children have
to work after Jurgis's imprisonment. Even that provides them with barely enough income to
survive. Marija has suffered an injury that may eventually require the amputation of her
hand. Stanislovas's hands are already damaged by frostbite. Everywhere in Packingtown,
there are wage laborers who suffer from some form of permanent disfigurement directly and
indirectly related to their work. In a sense, the prevalence of these disfiguring
injuries is a metaphor for butchery of human bodies. Human beings are butchered in the
service of profit-making as well as the animals.
Hard work, family values, self-reliance, and self- motivated action do absolutely nothing
to provide the means for social advancement. The wage laborers that populate The Jungle
are moved inevitably towards ruin and abuse by forces beyond their control. Capitalism is
a forces as inevitable and careless as nature. It picks off unfortunate individuals as
carelessly as cold weather, disease, and heat exhaustion.