March 03, 2020

25. The Jungle.

Listen Later

57 minutes

The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the

meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had

gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so

to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best of him—they had

worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had

thrown him away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these

unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience. There were

some, of course, who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up

in other mills; there were others who were out from their own fault—some, for

instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The

vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless

packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of

them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could

not keep up with it any more.

Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906)

describes the lives of the working class in America by following Jurgis

Rudkus, who moves with his family from Lithuania to the US at the turn of the

century and then spends several years toiling in the slaughterhouses of

Chicago. The novel ends with Jurgis’s conversion to socialism, and Sinclair

hoped to inspire the reader to the socialist cause as well. And although the

socialist revolution in America didn’t play out as Sinclair imagined, his

novel did lead to major reforms in food safety legislation. It offers a lot

for Suzanne and Chris to chew on.

Show Notes.

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle.

[Gutenberg.

Librivox.

Bookshop.]

Also by Upton Sinclair: Manassas. The Brass

Check. Oil!

There Will Be Blood [trailer].

An article on the Helicon Home Colony.

The story of Sinclair’s run for Governor of

California.

The original serialized version of The Jungle.

Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.

...more

View all episodes

View all episodes

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

The Spouter-Inn

By Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

4.8

3030 ratings

March 03, 2020

25. The Jungle.

Listen Later

57 minutes

The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the

meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had

gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so

to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best of him—they had

worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had

thrown him away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these

unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience. There were

some, of course, who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up

in other mills; there were others who were out from their own fault—some, for

instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The

vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless

packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of

them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could

not keep up with it any more.

Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906)

describes the lives of the working class in America by following Jurgis

Rudkus, who moves with his family from Lithuania to the US at the turn of the

century and then spends several years toiling in the slaughterhouses of

Chicago. The novel ends with Jurgis’s conversion to socialism, and Sinclair

hoped to inspire the reader to the socialist cause as well. And although the

socialist revolution in America didn’t play out as Sinclair imagined, his

novel did lead to major reforms in food safety legislation. It offers a lot

for Suzanne and Chris to chew on.

Show Notes.

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle.

[Gutenberg.

Librivox.

Bookshop.]

Also by Upton Sinclair: Manassas. The Brass

Check. Oil!

There Will Be Blood [trailer].

An article on the Helicon Home Colony.

The story of Sinclair’s run for Governor of

California.

The original serialized version of The Jungle.

Support The Spouter-Inn on Patreon.

...more