The Jungle - BookWyrm

eBook

Langue : English

Publié 8 août 2003 par Random House Publishing Group.

ISBN :: 978-0-553-89779-1
Numéro OCLC :: 236122056

In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, the astonishing truth about "packingtown," the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the "muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of "wage-slavery," the bewildering chaos of urban life. The Jungle, a story so shocking that it launched a government investigation, recreates this startling chapter if our history in unflinching detail. Always a vigorous champion on political reform, Sinclair is also a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one of the most important -- and moving -- works in the literature of social change.From the Paperback edition.

84 éditions

Mormegil@bookwyrm.social a publié une critique de The Jungle par Upton Sinclair

The Primal Scream of Socialism

3 étoiles

I am not a socialist, but I sympathize and agree with may of the problems that socialists point out. The fact that this book led Teddy Roosevelt to break up the Beef Trust is a significant fact. but as a novel I can't rate it any higher than three stars. The spectacle of human cruelty and nihilism is one of the most brutal I have ever read. If you have a family this will read like a horror novel. I'd say it is worth a read as part of history, if you are prepared for it. I am glad to have read it, but I had to pace myself. It is not a good novel, but it wasn't really meant to be a good novel so much as an agent of change. It will make it hard for you to unsee the familiar patterns of greed that grind humans into …

I am not a socialist, but I sympathize and agree with may of the problems that socialists point out. The fact that this book led Teddy Roosevelt to break up the Beef Trust is a significant fact. but as a novel I can't rate it any higher than three stars. The spectacle of human cruelty and nihilism is one of the most brutal I have ever read. If you have a family this will read like a horror novel. I'd say it is worth a read as part of history, if you are prepared for it. I am glad to have read it, but I had to pace myself. It is not a good novel, but it wasn't really meant to be a good novel so much as an agent of change. It will make it hard for you to unsee the familiar patterns of greed that grind humans into meat for profit. We might not be doing it literally anymore (which is an improvement), but we're still doing it.

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Literature - Classics / Criticism
Classics