J2 art < propaganda 10
“So the Scarlet letter is discussed by Sinclair in terms of the ethics of marriage, and Dante’s Inferno is described as “The Muckraker’s Hell.” Since great art, in Sinclair’s opinion, “is produced when propaganda of vitality and importance is put across with technical incompetence,” it becomes important to know what Sinclair meant by technical competence and what sort of propaganda he judged to be vital and important. Fortunately, the task is simplified because Sinclair was a remarkably consistent writer in terms of both method and ideological content.
J1 Propaganda=persuasive writing 10
“In Mammonart Sinclair contends that a proper definition of propaganda does not include negative connotations. To propagandize is simply to make systemic efforts to obtain support for one’s own point of view. Thus, Sinclair’s definition of art represents a minority opinion within modern academia: “Art is play, to the extent it is instinctive; it is propaganda when it becomes mature and conscious.””
I2 Socialism not for everyone: Racism in The Jungle 108
“…this is no slip of the pen on Sinclair’s part. He elsewhere refers to a “throng of stupid black negroes,” a phrase that convicts him of pleonasm [use of more words than necessary to express a meaning] as well as racism. It is often forgotten that the early American labor movement preached a sort of “white socialism” and –though Debs himself didn’t subscribe to it-that this sadly qualified its larger claim to be3 the liberator of the wage slaves.”
I1 Sinclair’s Realism 104
“Sinclair’s realism, indeed, got in the way of his socialism, in more than one fashion. His intention was to direct the conscious of America to the inhuman conditions in which immigrant labor was put to work. However, so graphic and detailed were the descriptions of the filthy was in which food was produced that his book sparked a revolution among consumers instead.”
H2 Chicago: The Perfect Setting 94
“While compiling facts, Sinclair never dropped his prejudices. He followed in the footsteps of southern social critics who decried the industrializing society of the North. Southern writers during the antebellum period, like George Fitzhugh, for instance, delighted in telling northerners that they were no better than the South-“cannibals all!”-since wage work was more degrading than slavery. Sinclair himself believed that southern slaves had it better than wage owners. But he had taken the time to do the research to justify his regional prejudices.”
H1 The Right Time to Reform 93
“On Sept 16, 1901, President William McKinley…was shot by an anarchist. Suddenly, Theodore Roosevelt was propelled into presidency. Roosevelt turned out to be a bold president who never forgot his predecessor’s assassination. He wanted to prevent future chaos in the country, not by jailing every radical out there but by eliminating the causes of their most strident and politically poignant complaints. He passed social and political legislation that confronted the problems generated by industrialization; problems he believed allowed radical assassins to justify their actions against a recalcitrant system.”
G2 Churchill’s Point of View of The Jungle 90
“The reader will not, I think, be satisfied with this conclusion. After all that has happened, after all that has been suffered, he will look for some more complete consolidation. Not so Mr. Upton Sinclair. This shrewd deb??? of character, the painstaking and careful exponent of detail appears sincerely unconscious of our disappointment…let us rejoice that through all this filth and agony one heart at least has been saved from error. There is one man more in Chicago who may be trusted to vote straight for the Socialist ticket. Hurrah!”
G1 The Jungle’s justification of using the worst scenario 87
“The “packers” are brought to the bar. The goods they sell, the materials they use, the city they dwell in, the wages they pay-every circumstance, great and small, of their business, together with its consequences, direct and remote-are subjected to a pitiless and malevolent scrutiny.”
“The worst has been told, and only the worst; it has been told in the most effective way; and the reader is confronted- nay, overwhelmed- by the concantations [series of] of filthy, tragic, detestable details, which reduce him, however combative or incredulous, to a kind of horror-struck docility.”
F2 Sinclair Exaggerated Housing Woes 81-82
“Knowledgeable contemporaries did not share Sinclair’s grim assessment. Robert Hunter omitted the distinct from his study of substandard Chicago housing because “There is no large area…where the conditions seem to be uniformly bad.”… “Very few houses…are deficient in provisions for light and ventilation, and none of them seem to be overly crowded.” As did fault some for inadequate drainage and filthy yards, but those evils do not extend over a large area. They are, in their worst forms, extraordinary and not typical.””
F1 Sinclair Distorted Workers’ Wages 80
“Sinclair wanted readers to believe that Packinghouse workers were “rats in a trap,” that prostitutes fared better than “decent” girls, and that “if you met a man who was rising…you met a knave…”
“Ernest Pooles’ protagonist advanced from five dollars per week in his first job to eleven dollars per week and said that was “very common. There are thousands of immigrants like me.””
E2 Doomed From the Very Beginning 70
“The plight of workers in general might stir sympathy, even indignation, but their protests often come in the form of strikes that inconvenienced and antagonized the public…The hard fact was that the largely middle-class Americans, mostly women, who bought and read books in the early 1900s were not likely to demand the end of wage slavery.” Workers’ problems for these readers were mostly distant and theoretical concerns, no matter how vividly described.”
E1 The Jungle and Uncle Tom’s Cabin 69
“He admitted that as a work of literary art it was less than perfect “its skeleton sticks through its every joint”-“but he who can read a hundred pages of it, for the first or twentieth time, with dry eyes, is not an enviable person.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin remained, despite its imperfections, “The most unquestionable piece of inspiration in American fiction.””
Socialism: a new religion 66
“Socialism, for Sinclair, “was the new religion of humanity- or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application of all the teachings of Christ…”
D17 Capitalism Reward Immoral Behavior 65
“Men are not essentially evil, but within capitalism immoral behavior is systematically rewarded.”
“Consequently, good men turn vicious in order to survive. Jurgis who lives desperately to retain traditional values, yield to the stronger forces of inhumanity at the death of his son, “tearing up from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them.”
D16 About Capitalism in the early 1900s 65
“…America had built its experiment on tried and tested foundations of competition and greed…Jurgis…sets out…to solve his own problems through his own honest efforts (; he wants to work)…but in this point of view had become a demonstration of naiveté rather than of healthy optimism. Jurgis’s co-laborers had already discovered that the game was rigged to allow only a few winners. So their response is the complete negation of the American Dream; they hate to work.”
D15 Reason #3 to why The Jungle failed 64
“The public’s positive response to Sinclair’s described symptom (meat packing conditions) while ignoring his deeper diagnosis (capitalistic greed), probably has more to do with audience than with author. If the story is read as exposing a scandal, a law can be passed, inspectors can be appointed to enforce that law, and we the people can receive a sense of continuing progress. This is far more palatable than reading the story as an indictment of one’s entire way of life.”
D14 Reason #2 to why The Jungle failed 63-64
“Through Jurgis, the reader learns about the advantages and imminence of socialism. But the speeches are tacked onto a plot that stops moving when Jurgis sits down and listen.”
“Sinclair agreeing that the conclusion is weak…He was too poor to turn his socialistic sermons into a more effective ending of The Jungle. In his Autobiography, he writes: “The last chapters were not up to standard because my health and my money were gone, and a second trip to Chicago, which I had hoped to make, was out of the question.”
D13 Reason #1 to why The Jungle failed 63
“Literature becomes impressive and memorable as it reduces abstract concepts to concrete examples. It is easier to remember that children’s fingers, cows’ fetuses, and rat dung are the unlisted ingredients in deviled ham than that workers are oppressed, by definition, a capitalist economy.”
D12 What troubled Sinclair 62
“…he did care deeply about what the meat industry typified and represented-the apparent failure on the part of American society to live up to established American ideals. The fact that the reading public responded to what he described as a symptom indicates his failure to communicate the more important concern about basic illness.”
D11 The Jungle’s Success and Failure 62
“To treat it f???? then, The Jungle must be considered from two points of view. Historically, it provided the impetus for useful legislation. Few writers accomplish this, and it should be remembered that Sinclair’s goal was to affect lives of the readers. For an understanding of why Sinclair considered it a failure, however, the novel must be ???????ed in terms of his larger purpose- converting a populace to democratic socialism…”
D10 Sinclair Voice in the matter of failed attempt of converting Americans to Socialism 62
“In Cosmopolitan Magazine (Oct 1906) Sinclair wrote:
Perhaps you will be surprised to be told that I failed in my purpose, when you know of all the uproar that “The Jungle” has been creating. But then that uproar is all accidental and was due to an entirely different cause. I wished to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters doing to their victims; entirely by chance I had stumbled on another discovery- what they were doing to the meat supply of the civilized world. In other words, I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident, I hit it in the stomach.”
D9 Defining Trait of the Progressive Era 61
“As Hofstadter demonstrates, “what was new in muckraking in the Progressive Era was neither its ideas nor its existence, but its reach- its nationwide character and its capacity to draw nationwide attention…” so there was an element of foul in the success of Sinclair’s novel.”
D8 Differing Motives for Muckrakers 61
“According to [noted historian] Richard Hofstadter,
most outstanding figures in the muckrake era were simply writers or reporters working in commission and eager to do well what was asked of them. A few, among them Upton Sinclair and Gustavus Myers, were animated by a deep-????? Dislike of the capitalist order, but most of them were hired into muckraking or directed toward it on the initiative of conscious editors or publishers.”
D7 What America needs: economic equality 61
“For Sinclair, ????? democracy to industry ??????? an ????? to both economic and spiritual questions. He was not the first American to come to this conclusion… The Protestant Reformation had acknowledged all men equal in status before God. The American and French Revolutions had introduced political equality. Now it was necessary to add economic equality in order to allow men their natural right to a humane and fulfilling existence.”
D6 Jurgis’s Problem 60
“In Sinclair’s book, his vision of reality, Jurgis cannot succeed financially without exchanging his high morality and willingness to work for a cynical acceptance of the need to lie, cheat, steal, and exploit others…”
D5 The Laws of The Jungle 59
“…Sinclair was in no way one of those theorists who sought to apply the biological insights of Darwin to the realm of social relationships…rather than praising competition…Sinclair accepted the contradictory value of cooperation. Competition, the socially inadequate law of the jungle, turned men into brutes in his novel…Those who survived the dehumanizing competition inherent in capitalism were likely to be the least fit morally.”
D4 No Equal Opportunities 59
“Again Handlin supports Sinclair’s early analysis:
“It was characteristic that about then [1900], for every 100 dollars earned by native wage users, the Italian born earned 84, the Hungarians 68, and the other Europeans 54.””
D3 European ideals does not suit living in America 59
“According to Oscar Handlin, this effort was doomed to fail from the time they got on board the boat in Europe: “The qualities that were desirable in the good peasant were not those conducive to success in the transition. Neighborliness, obedience, respect, and status were valueless among the masses that struggled for space on the way.””
D2 Economics and Spirituality in The Jungle 58
“If these were new sorts of immigrants, they were coming for traditional economics and religious reasons. And Sinclair, who never separated his economic condition from his spiritual or psychological state, was increasingly convinced that without socialism America could offer these new believers in the American Dream only a nightmarish existence.”
D1 The Immigrant Experience 58
“Since he wanted to give a current report on the state of the American experiment, Sinclair’s creation of a Lithuanian immigrant family was quite appropriate. For significant Russian immigration (including Lithuanians) was a recent phenomenon. In 1880 only 5000 Russians [immigrated] to the United States. But this number increased steadily until 1904, one year after The Jungle was published, when more than a quarter of a million Russians bet their lives that America was their promised land.”
C14 Upton Sinclair Remembered 49
“And it was not until a new rebellious literature and criticism emerged after the War, under the leadership of Sinclair Lewis and H.L. Mencken, that Upton Sinclair was again mentioned among American writers by any reputable native critic who was not a Socialist.”
C13 Upton Sinclair in the eyes of the big business supported media 48
“It was the fashion to sneer at Upton Sinclair, and to accept yellow journalism [disreputable newspapers] pictures of him, in which he was represented as a mere sensation-monger and fool to boot. George Brandes, generally accounted the world’s greatest modern critic, was astonished at this American neglect of one of its greatest writers; on visiting this country in 1914, he took pains to say to the American novelists who he found worth reading, among them being Upton Sinclair. This statement, as it generally appeared in the press, referred only to Frank Norris and Jack London, omitting Upton Sinclair’s name altogether.”
C12 Muckraking Loses Favor with Readers 47-48
“The public, deprived of the intellectual stimulant of unpleasant truth before it had quite gotten used to it, was easily ???? in more cheerful tastes. Those writers who sought to revive the art of muckraking found themselves with an indifferent audience. “People aren’t interested in that sort of thing anymore.” While as for fiction, the old genteel tradition reasserted itself, the standard of non-controversy became identical with the standard of decency, and any author who dared to violate this standard ran the risk of finding himself removed in critical esteem beyond the pale of literary respectability...”
C11 The Muckraking Era Climaxes 47
“…in a country where every year, in one great industry or another, there was a bitter struggle between employers and ????? in which bullets were the deciding factor…The newspapers were already well in hand; but there was a group of free magazines which were making money out of “muckraking”-the very center of the intellectual rebellion. Big business struck at this group of free magazines, effectively, through the medium of advertising. The magazine policies were changed. Writers were called off from investigations of industrial conditions. An immense campaign of optimism was begun, and a cheerful outlook upon American industrial conditions was preached and made synonymous with patriotism…”
C10 His Audience Turns Away 46
“He also added a hundred thousand readers to the circulation of a popular magazine which speedily repudiated its early muckraking habits and became a defender of big business; and he had made a fortune for his publishers, who immediately became conservative and devoted to their profits from The Jungle to promote a land of writing hostile to everything in everything which he believed.”
C9 The Jungle did not Improve Workers’ Conditions 45
“Nothing in particular was done about the workers’ conditions. ?????? the President’s meat-inspection law, as finally passed, had, in the opinion of those behind it, all its teeth drawn [pulled] first. Sinclair attempted to agitate the question, but the public had been reassured, and the effort was futile.”
C8 Business Interest Fight Back 44
“The Young novelist accepted, as a socialist, the opportunity which this situation provided for agitation. But the packers, and the large business interest, in general, were aroused, and all their power and influence was used to keep this agitation from reaching the public, and to represent the young agitator as an irresponsible sensation-monger. He set up a publicity bureau…; but so thoroughly had the newspapers been mobilized by the business interests that the publicity he actually achieved the workers’ cause was slight; and on the other hand, his own reputation, in genteel literacy and critical circles, and among the public at large, was seriously damaged.”
C7 Sinclair’s Charges are Confirmed 44
“The public was more or less prepared for such charges against the packers, on account of the “embalmed beef” scandal during the Spanish-American War. President [Theodore] Roosevelt, responding to a widespread popular demand, sent a commission to Chicago to make an investigation of conditions in Packingtown. Their commission was assisted, at Sinclair’s expense, by a [American political organizer and writer] Ella Reeve Bloor, who had been familiar with conditions there and had helped him ???? seven weeks’ investigation preliminary to the writing of the novel; and the reseacchers of the commission appear to have confirmed the chief changes made in the book.”
C6 The Public is Disapproving Reaction (to Sinclair’s POV) 43
“But the literary sensation had already become secondary to the shock of its readers in learning of the conditions under which their meats were prepared in Packingtown, not as affecting the workers but as affecting their own health-for the story delt incidentally with the use of condemned meat…his deepest concern had been with the fate of the workers, and he realized with bitterness that he had become a celebrity not because the public cared anything about the workers, but because it did not want to eat diseased meat.”
C5 International Acclaim 43
“…in book form in 1906. It was an immediate and enormous success. It became a “bestseller” in America, England, and the British Colonies. It was translated into seventeen languages, and the world became aware that industrial America in its tail, its misery and its hope had found a voice.”
C4 Jack London’s Comment on The Jungle 43
“And of course, [American novelist] Jack London, his comrade in the Socialist movement did not fail to acclaim this achievement. “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery” [referring to the famous antislavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe], he called it and with that legend on the jacket and in the advertisements it was brought before the general American public in book form in 1906.”
C3 An Empathetic Audience 42
“For a while, the knowledge that a great new novelist had appeared in America was almost confined to the readers of that Socialist weekly- no small audience, however, for the “Appeal Army” of enthusiastic subscription getters had drummed up half a million readers for that publication. The first public, therefore, astonishing novel, was of farmers resting in stocking feet beside the stove of winter evenings, and of discontented workingmen in a thousand cities and towns-an audience which, whether rural or urban, understood the truths of human suffering which it so vividly portrayed. That was its first success- its recognition and acclaim by a proletarian audience.”
C2 Overview of The Jungle 42
“The story was simple enough; it related to the fortunes of a group of immigrants who lived and worked in the stockyards district- their struggle to get ahead, to own a home, to bring up their children decently, while all the time they are brutally exploited, ???? open, robbed, outraged by the unscrupulous forces which find in their poverty and ignorance and helplessness were opportunities for enrichment…”
C1 The Public didn’t Care Anymore 41
“Sinclair’s The Jungle shook up the institution he attacked, the meatpacking trust, but not in the manner he intended. His novel had little practical effect toward ameliorating the chief problem it tackled, the rights of workers in Packingtown. Even as the novel was being read by millions, big business in America fought back with all of its power and influence. Sinclair’s literary reputation was damaged in the battle. The era of muckraking had come to an end, and American audiences were no longer eager for heart treading tales of abused workers. Instead, public opinion turned back toward more cheerful literary ???. True to his nature, Sinclair refused to bow to pressure an continued writing muckraking tales that were not very good and did not sell well. But their lack of literary value was not the reason: had his words been poor but fashionable, he would have maintained his standing in the literary community.”
B10 The Jungle’s Endurance 39-40
“Most of Sinclair’s fiction no doubt deserves to molder in the book barn. But the influence of The Jungle may still be seen in investigative journalism… Sinclair’s ideas didn’t go a away either. The union hall may nearly be empty, but his desire for an alternative world within American capitalism has borne fruit in such non-profit organizations as food co=operation, daycare centers, and public radio and television. His personal habits of non-stop opinionizing and self-serving rant find their natural heir in the blog. His austere citizenly dedication inspired the young Ralph Nader, who has acknowledged the debt…He was one of the great American squares, exasperating and tone-deaf his entire life. But an ethical man tugs at us from the grave more persistently than merely successful men, who gone to a quieter form of rest.”
B9 Sinclair’s Improvement Schemes and Aftermath 38
“In the Helicon Affair, as on other occasions, Sinclair was plagued by the kind of comic misfortune that tends to befall those beat on imposing themselves and others. He was skeptical of the morals of industrialists and newspaper publishers but receptive to the delusions of quacks. He had a weakness for nostrums and half-baked schemes (including his own).”
B8 The Jungle only accomplished some of the goals Sinclair sought 38
“But Chicago didn’t become “ours,” which was something that Sinclair had trouble understanding. The shock over The Jungle was extraordinary, but it didn’t produce what Sinclair hoped for- outrage over the exploitation of the workers, and the first steps toward the defeat of capitalism. “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach,” he later said in perhaps his sole public witticism. Roosevelt brushed off the call off the call for socialist revolution, and though he acted vigorously on contaminated food, his measures were neither as vigorous nor as comprehensive as Sinclair wanted.”
B7 Sinclair’s Characters lack Depth 37
“Any kind of inwardness was beyond Sinclair: his characters, suffering without any gain in consciousness, remain mere names attached to dressing social conditions. Jurgis falls in with criminals and corrupt politicians, and then, suddenly, at a public meeting, he’s electrified by a fervent voice… The book ends with Jurgis rapid conversion to socialism and with an outpouring of blood-raising speeches inspired by the words of Eugene V. Debs. The last line in the novel is “CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”
B6 Powerful Diction of The Jungle 35-36
“The force of The Jungle can be suggested only by quoting it at length. Sinclair’s prose is fluent and forward moving, but he rarely writes an interesting phrase or discovers weight or color in a word. He built his effects through precise reporting and the remorseless piling up of detail; he was a master of the routines of physical labor and the gear-by-gear minutiae of industrial processes. In the meatpacking scenes, he holds his rhythm steady and lets the hideous facts do their work.”
B5 How Sinclair found “Open Secrets” in The Jungle 34
He was twenty-six, a slender, pale young man with soft lips and liquid eyes. Zealous and excitable, he suffered from nervous tension, indigestion, and headaches. Away form his demanding and unhappy wife, however, he was content. He walked all over Chicago’s more dismal neighborhoods, asking questions of workers, union organizers, settlement house officials. And for days, he wandered through the vast Armour facilities in shabby clothes, lunch bucket in hand. There was very little security at the plant. No one challenged this oddly inquiring worker.”
B4 The Situation of American Livestock Business 34
“At the time, livestock was among the largest industries in the country. In Chicago, companies like Armour and Swift owned acres of yards, pens, slaughterhouses, and packing plants. The filthy conditions in such places were an open secret hut the big companies, working together (the “Beef Trust”), bribed government inspectors, and exercised enough control over the local newspapers to avoid serious censure. The Unions were weak and defenseless; the companies were able to replace rebellious workers from constantly renewed pool of Central and Eastern European immigrants.”
B3 Challenged To Write 33-34
“…as he worked on the galleys, he read Marx and Veblen. Eugene V. Debs had formed the Socialist Party of America in 1901, and in 1904, Sinclair joined up. In those early years of the century, socialism was a kind of militant humanism; Sinclair, like many of the socialists of the period, believed that the scramble for profits degraded relations between people. He approached socialism “as a moralist, not a political theorist,” Anthony Arthur writes. “Both his strengths and weaknesses derived from his simplistic belief that all injustice stemmed from greed, whether for money or power.” After Manassas was published, in the summer of 1904, the editor of a popular socialist magazine, The Appeal to Reason, challenged Sinclair to write a novel about “wage slavery.””
B2 Sinclair Largely Forgotten 32
“In 1906, Upton Sinclair was twenty-seven years old; he continued publishing for more than sixty years, a clattering typewriter that would not stop. No two scholars seem to agree on exactly how many books he wrote, but the number is above ninety, and his output, in addition to social-protest and historical novels, including plays, screenplays, tracts, journalistic expose acts, journalistic exposés, didactic dialogues, instructional manuals, and autobiographies. Sinclair spoke at rallies, joined strikes and protests, and repeatedly ran for political office; he sponsored Sergei Eisenstein’s epic unfinished documentary about Mexican Indians, “Que Viva México.” Ezra Pound, who knew a thing or two about obsession, said that Sinclair was not a maniac but a “polymaniac.” During many periods of his life, Sinclair’s activities were widely discussed in the press, and in the eyes of some prominent contemporaries, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Bernard Shaw, he was an invaluable guide to twentieth-century politics. Too many people, however, he now seems remote and musty—the author of flaking volumes encountered in country book barns. Apart from “The Jungle,” Sinclair’s works have been largely forgotten, or perhaps simply mislaid, his name confused with that of Sinclair Lewis, the author of “Main Street,” “Babbitt,” and “Dodsworth.””
B1 Power of The Jungle in America 31-32
“The Jungle played a major role in pushing forward the Pure Food and Drug Act, which Roosevelt had long favored, and which was passed in June of 1906, marking a major expansion of federal regulatory power. The book’s influence hit the dinner table as well; after a couple of years, meat consumption declined, and it was widely believed that Sinclair’s book was the cause. By common consent among literary historians, only one American novel- before or since Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin- has had so powerful an influence on practical affairs.”
A12 Sinclair’s Flexibility in Socialistic Ideals 27
“Sinclair was drawn into the controversy surrounding America’s entrance into World War I. Feeling that the German militarism represented a threat to world peace, Sinclair temporarily parted ways with the American Socialist Party, which opposed the intervention. His act suggests a more flexible ideological attitude than that typically demonstrated by American radicalism in 1917. Sinclair’s flexibility became ??? ?? evident in 1918 when he grew critical of American military attempts to suppress the Bolshevik revolution.”
A11 Sinclair’s Attempt to Convert Others to Socialism 25
“Between 1908 and 18”914…his career took several directions. He organized a communal living experiment at Helicon Hall in new Jersey only to see the building burn down in March 1907. He wrote The Industrial Republic (1907), a nonfiction attempt to explain that socialism can be achieved by “A process as natural...as that by which a chick breaks out of its shell.” The primary value of the book is its ????? of the benevolent but naïve spirit of pre-World War I American socialism… Sinclair began to live in several utopian communities.”
A10 The Jungle’s Impact and Legacy 25
“In spite of these problems, The Jungle had, and still has inestimable value as a powerful story depicting conditions and people that do not often appear in the pages of American literature. It both questions the American dream of success and demands that that dream be more inclusive and more rigorously transformed into economic reality.”
“…For Sinclair himself, The Jungle virtuously guaranteed that the rest of his career would be anticlimactic. The success of the word, including its impact on legislation aimed at pure food and sanitary meat processing, was an act which Sinclair found difficult to follow.”
A9 Confusion of the Deliverance of the Socialist message in The Jungle 25
“The structure of the novel is complicated by Sinclair’s attempt first to show how heartbreaking life could be for the industrial proletariat and then to depict socialism as the obvious way to improve that life. After Jurgis is reduced to extreme forms of degradation, becoming a hobo, a criminal, and even a strike breaking scab, he stumbles into a socialist lecture. The lecture transforms his view of the world; he is virtually home again. But once this occurs, his role as protagonist in the narrative disappears, and the last few chapters of the novel are given over to socialist argument and analysis which Jurgis hears but does not generate. Instead, the statements, chiefly optimistic projections of anew world in the making, come from the mouths of the articulated, educated, and even wealthy socialists. In the socialist ending of The Jungle- in contrast to the nationalistic narrative preceding it-the working class loses its voice.”
A8 How The Jungle was started 24
“Manassas also created the opportunity for The Jungle (1906) by convincing the editor of a radical newspaper to challenge Sinclair to write a novel treating the “wage slaves” of industry in a manner similar to the treatment of chattel slaves in Manassas. Thus in the fall of 1904 Sinclair spent two months in the packing-plant district of Chicago, the source of an unsuccessful strike against the packers several months earlier. He talked with workers and visited the packing plants both as an official tourist and, in disguise, as a worker. He saw enough corruption, filth, and poverty to make The Jungle a gripping, emotionally wrenching novel.”
A7 Development of Sinclair’s System of ideals prior to The Jungle 23
“Sinclair’s essential literary step toward socialism was the writing of Manassas (1904), a novel of the Civil War in which a young Southerner, Alan Montague, the son of a plantation owner, becomes a proponent of Abolition. Prior to writing this novel Sinclair had begun to learn about the socialist movement from prominent socialists in New York. His writing an abolitionist novel suggested that he had broken with his own Southern roots and was now prepared to adapt a radical stance towards social problems… Manassas is the best of his early novels, and its theme of idealistic opposition to an unjust society is the theme of Upton Sinclair.”
A6 Discovery of Socialism 22-23
“Young Sinclair’s first real literary efforts, between 1900 and 1904, were novels which took romantic idealism itself as their central subject. Read today, these works- Springtime and Harvest (1901), Prince Hagen (1903), The Overman (1907, written in 1902-1903), The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903), and A Captain of Industry (1906, written in 1903), - seem immature and awkwardly pretentious. But they clearly show Sinclair groping toward a discovery of socialism. This discovery began with romantic idealism, passed through an exuberant fascination with Nietzsche and possibilities of self and emerged in a recognition that spirit and idealism have few chances in a world of corruption and oppression.”
A5 Origin of Sinclair’s Unique Career: Genteel cultural influences, poverty, idealism, ambition 22
“He grew up in Baltimore and New York City as the only son of a ne’er-do-well salesman from a respected Virginia family. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore family that presented a divided contrast to the usually shabby existence provided by his father…”
“…Among the subjects he felt himself dream to were music, contemporary politics, and Romantic poetry. In the Romantic poetry, especially Shelley, whom he studied under George Edward Woodberry, Sinclair found sufficient inspiration to abandon his career as a pulp writer and take up the production of serious literature…”
A4 Upton Sinclair: Conservative lifestyle, radical thinking. Contradictions 21
“Beyond these surface attitudes, but never completely buried in his works, be a number of contradictions a and tensions Sinclair was a person of essentially genteel and conservative upbringing who became a literary radical. Although he has often been seen as the champion of the oppressed, a novelist who wrote for and about the honest working classes, many of his works have elitist tendencies. More than anything else though, he was a ninetieth-century idealist of initially romantic and even Nietzschean [after the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche] traits who chose to confront the hard facts of twentieth century industrial life.”
A3 Sinclair’s Belief in the Power of the Pen 21
“His single-minded intensity is the unifying feature; Sinclair was always a idealist and the visionary-who agreed with Shelley that writers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, or at least should be, and who seldom doubted that his ideas and words would, if heeded, produce a better world.”
A2 Sinclair’s Reputation After The Jungle 20-21
“Since World War II, his literary reputation has declined. Yet The Jungle (1906) is one of the best known and most historically significant of American novels, and Sinclair himself remains an important figure in American political and cultural history.”
A1 Reason for Being a Muckraker 20
“Upton Sinclair was writer whose main concerns were politics and economics. His ideas about literature-his own, written over six decades, and that of others- were inseparable form his dreams of social injustice. Consequently, the great majority of his books, fiction as well as nonfiction, were written as specific means to specific ends. Since the essential purpose of literature, for Sinclair, was the betterment of human conditions, he was a muckraker [a writer who exposes corruption], a propagandist, an interpreter of socialism and a critic of capitalism, a novelist more concerned with concerned with content than form, a journalistic chronicler of his times rather than an enduring artist.”
