Summary
The Jungle (1906) is Upton Sinclair’s searing exposé of the brutal realities of life in the American meatpacking industry at the turn of the 20th century. Blending fiction with investigative journalism, the novel follows Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Chicago’s Packingtown district with dreams of prosperity—but quickly finds himself crushed under the weight of poverty, corruption, and industrial exploitation.
Jurgis and his family take grueling jobs in the city’s massive meatpacking plants, where they endure horrifying working conditions: contaminated food, dangerous equipment, pitiless bosses, and wages barely enough to survive.
As tragedy strikes again and again—illness, injury, death, eviction—Jurgis descends into homelessness, crime, and despair.
But the novel takes a turn in its final chapters, when Jurgis is introduced to socialist ideas, which Sinclair presents as the true path to justice and dignity for the working class. Though the book’s final message is utopian, its power lies in the grim, vivid realism of its early chapters, which caused a national outcry upon publication.