The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

This is honestly a book that I deem "take it or leave it." Although parts of it are really, really good, there are plenty of parts that you just have to slog through that really made this book a somewhat difficult read.

The best parts of the book revolve around the story of a Lithuanian family, and its leader Jurgis, that comes to the U.S. in the early 1900s looking to get a better life in America. What they find is the dismal working and living conditions presented to immigrants in the Chicago meat packing factories. I thought this book would be totally about the processes of meat packing that got so much criticism as a result of this book, leading to the Food and Drug Act, but there's a largely ignored element of this story: the exceedingly harsh treatment of workers in the plants who had no choice due to language limitations, economic hardship, and families needing support. Personally, I found the study of the human toll the so-called Meat Trust enacted on the Chicago working class was the most horrific element of the novel; yet, it's rarely discussed when putting the book in it historical context (which is where most of my knowledge about this book came from before reading it) because it's place in muckraking literature and the prompting of the Food and Drug Act are its lasting legacies in the popular discussions of the present.

Yet, Sinclair falls into the trap that many authors do when they try to insert their politics into their novels. Even though the story itself presents obvious support for change in the political and economic leadership of the U.S. at the time, Sinclair still feels the need to use the end of his book to blatantly set out the Socialist Party's agenda, using long speeches of fictional party leaders. It became boring rather fast; it's actually very similar to the John Galt speech in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which I skipped when I read that novel. I just tend to respect authors who wrap their political statements into the story without setting aside pages and pages to act as simply a manifesto of their political ideas. It made the book slog along a bit towards the end.

Ultimately, this novel contains a very good story that could have been used alone as an impetus for social and political change in the U.S. (especially considering its popularity at the time). It's downfall was Sinclair's need to delineate his political ideas in a party document fashion. Still, there is much more to the story than just a wholesale criticism of the meat packing industry, and the family members' struggles to deal with a life that they had never expected.

My rating: 7.5/10

Other reviews:
Debi at nothing of importance

Next up: The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez