In the book The Jungle, people got treated just like the animals, poorly and unnecessary. Jurgis came to America in search of the American Dream, but also the treatment where he was at was not good. America is known for freedom and for your rights. I could understand why anyone would want to come here instead of a poor country. Jurgis was also in need of a job, and where he needed to be was here, in America.

I chose this picture because it shows the guys around the cows in their pins. They are probably getting them around so they can go get slaughtered. I do not think it is right for the cows to be crammed in to a tight place with no where to go and they are in their own poop. It is unsanitary!

In The Jungle, Jurgis really had no choice what to what he could do. He had to make money to support his family, and he wasn’t anyone important, just an immigrant, so he had to find work somewhere. He found one in Packingtown, Chicago, at a meat factory. He carried “ home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour-just about his proper share of the million and three quarters of children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.”(85)  I chose this quote because it was relavent to saying his pay. I do not think this could last him long at all, seeing how prices are different today from back then, still doesn’t amount to much. There were still high priced things then, and I don’t see how anyone could have a healthy living style earning only 3 dollars per pay period, and make all the ends meet.

They must have sacrafised a lot because of their situation. In this picture there is a family with a husband and wife and two kids. They looked like they had little or no money by just looking. I am not judging just observating. In this picture the family looks like they have not bathed in awhile, also the man seems scruffy. They are not well dressed but they have clothes on their body, and a roof over their head. The walls look like they may have cracks. There seems to be not good quality conditions. Jurgis and his family were the same way.

“He would not have Ona working- he was not that sort of man, he said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing if a man like him could not support the family..”(55) Jurgis didn’t want his wife to work, he wanted to be the main supporter, everyone thinks men should do the work and women should stay at home, that is what Jurgis wanted, but I guess that’s not how it works.

Whenever Ona would get late home sometimes, Jurgis always wondered what was going on. Pretty soon he found out she had got raped by her boss, Phil Connor. This is no way to treat a lady of any kind, women should be treated with respect at all times, then or now. Jurgis had got really angry and went to Ona’s work, he then hit Phil Connor and made him unconscious. Jurgis then went to jail. He did not want to have anyone in his household to have a job. When Jurgis went to jail, they had nasty conditions,  “ His dinner was duffers and dope hunks of dry bread, on a plate, and coffee dope because it was drugged to keep prisoners quiet.”(190). That is not right to do to anyone, if someone did that to them they would have a fit, but no one cares about the people in jail, they think they are a piece of crap. And probably because of Jurgis’s race.

The people who owned the packing houses and were the bosses did not care who had a job and who didn’t, “Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had grown old in their own service-to say nothing of taking on new ones.” This says they didn’t want older men on the line, maybe because they were slower? Also even though the older men knew what they were doing, they want younger, faster, stronger, men to have them work for them.

In conclusion I think this book shows a good lesson to everyone, it tells about immigrants, and working conditions our ancestors might have gone through, and many other things. I see how things are so different in others eyes compared to ours. American’s have it made compared to other countries. We should be more appreciative.

“I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. (Sinclair). I can understand exactly what he means; I too was hit in the stomach while reading Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, which is about a family that moves to America with high hopes to live the American Dream. Shortly after they are in America, their eyes are opened to the cruel and harsh nation that they entered. Jurgis, the main character, is forced to work at the stockyards in a meat packaging plant.Sinclair’s goal was to inform people about the treatment of the people in the meat packaging plants, instead he informed the people about the harsh treatment that not only the workers received, but the animals as well. As a reader, it was really difficult for me to get passed the earlier chapters because it described the cruelty involved when butchering the animals.Chapter three especially opened my eyes to the cruel and grotesquethings that they did to the animals. I think that the reason why it “hit the public in the stomach”, was because he explained so graphically what happened to the animals

There were times while I was reading the book when I just had to put it down and try to think about something else because the images racing through my mind were disgusting. “Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it- it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.” (45-46.) I started thinking about my personal morals and it made my stomach churn. The animals in the meat packaging plants had no way to defend themselves against the knives and chains they faced. No matter how loud they squealed in fear, their fate had already been decided for them. “…they were so innocent, they came so trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests-and so perfectly within their rights.” (45).

The above picture is all I could think about when I was reading chapter 3. The animals were so innocent. I realize that we needed to have them to survive and provide for our country, but the way in which they were slaughtered what just inhumane. “They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft.” (44). The pigs could feel all the pain that was wished upon them by the workers in the plant. Granted, the workers had no option but to do their job if they wanted to survive. There were no tranquilizers or gas to make them not feel pain. They were subjected to remember their last few moments on this earth as excruciatingly painful.

Long time no see   I’m Yuni.  Last winter vacation I gained my weight, really sad But to see you again makes me happy.  Let me introduce Korea’s students vacations. Vacations are not special. Vacation  = afterschool study and academy and vacation homework!  I really want to hear your vacation activity. I guess your vacationss are very various. What do you do with your friends? Usually we go downtown.

Hi my name is Anne (Kim Hye Jung) nice to meet you again. I’m 18 years old . There are 3 members in my family and a dog. I love animation and soccer and my hobby is drawing some picutrues I hate creepy things In Februaarry there wasn’t any special event. I watched some animation and I practiced drawing characters. Well, I was not busy at all. Actually I spent many times with my computer to get some information about some universities. I wanted to go to and I managed my blog and my own homepage  That is it I passed time doing things like above.

Hello I’m really glad to meet you again. I’m Hwang Young Ha.  This year I’m 18 years old.  In winter vacation, I went to a display of Silk Road and DunHuang with my friend. It’s very exciting. Hyecho, who made  Wangochunchukkukjun (It’s his experience of visiting India) was very nice and human.  I was proud of being Korean and I was happy to see the book.  It’s a happy vacation and Let’s start our happy talking

Hi, Nice to see you again. I’m Kim Eun Sol. Did you have a nice winter vacation? My vacation was all same every day.  I go to school, taking extra classes.  I’m so sad.  On March 2nd We began School! I majored in English class  We have lots of English lessons, more than other classess.  How are you? Is your school starting? Did you get promoted?  I’ve been promoted to the 2nd grade. I look forward to seeing you again, I miss all of you!

Hey guys long time no see. I miss you.  I’m Ji Hye Chu. Do you remember me?  How was your vacation?  Is it cool.?  I’m still studying hard in the dorm and school. I want to see a movie or drama, really!. And I have a question about prom or party — I wonder about that.  Next , tell me how you are doing these days.

Hello Happy to meet you again. My name is Park Garam I have a commonplace  winter vacation. I  planned to study hard but I failed. And I went to some delicious restaurants with my friend so I worry about my weight.  Now I will have to study really hard. I belong to the information club, this year I enlist the younger generation, they are so cute and nice. I expected that.   The information club explains aboout our school to others.

Money, success, fame, and everything else that goes along with what most people think of when the idea of the American dream comes to mind. It’s all about the money for many, and those who come to the U.S. looking for that success. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair illustrates the ideas that a large Lithuanian family had about moving to America.The family had heard about the riches they could have, and they wanted that “American dream”. Jurgis, who is one of the main characters in The Jungle had heard about all the money that could be made in America and when the U.S. wages are compared with their home-countries prices it seemed like they would become rich. The other main character is Ona, who is Jurgis’ wife. They were married in Lithuanian and wanted a better life so they, along with the rest of there quite large family decided they needed to move to America. They had to sell everything to pay for their tickets to make the trip across the ocean. But as soon as they stepped off of the crammed immigration ship it became clear that they were drastically unprepared and the American dream that they had heard about was no where to be found. They could speak no english, and when they arrived in a very busy Chicago, no one would help them. They eventually found someone who could speak both languages and gave them somewhere to stay for the night. But their future was very uncertain, and scary.

When Jurgis found a job at a meat packing plant, and he realized the type of labor he would be doing, he was sure this was not what he had heard about. But in fact it was, and when the family had left Lithuania they sold everything to pay for the trip. So they were stuck in America, living in a house built for about 5 people and they were trying to house near triple that. The American dream often has to do with hard work and dedication but Jurgis along with the rest of the family was not expecting these horrid working conditions that the people were expected to work in. “The place ran with steaming hot blood, one waded in it on the floor” (Sinclair 53-54). Those are the types of working conditions that everyone in the factory was working in. That sound far from the American dream that they were expecting.

Their house that they had just bought was also extremely undersized. There were barely enough beds and rooms for the women and children. ”The three men and the oldest boy slept in the other room, having nothing but the very level floor to rest on”(Sinclair 70). The family was in a grim reality that they would struggle to survive if more of the family memebers were not employed, and soon. They started looking for employment opportunities immediately or they would surely starve. Getting bare minimum or under minimum wage jobs. The wage laws were not enforced at all, so the people didn’t know any better, they just knew they needed some kind of job. The American dream that comes to mind when i think about it is nothing like what Jurgis and the family is living. Their ideas about the riches they would make are far off in the distant, and no one seems to be helping them out, its a “not my problem” kind of deal in Packingtown.

Poor working conditions can go along with the failure of the American dream in The Jungle. The entire family is working jobs they do not want to work just to barely get by. The conditions eventually were the near death of all of them. Jurgis was at work and twisted his ankle, that eventually became three times it’s size at the end of the day. This was also during winter when the family needed the most money for food, their house and clothing. Jurgis was told by the doctor to stay home for a few weeks and see the doctor then. But he only got worse, and eventually had another doctor come in to check him out. They determined it to be much more serious than a rolled ankle, and the doctor told him that he should be back at work in 2-3 months. The family, along with Jurgis were sure there was another way. But they had to make it work. When Jurgis returned to work in the Spring, he found that his job was no longer there. He had been replaced. His dream of making it in America was completely shattered at this point. I really see no way the family can make it at this point in the book. Jurgis was the main source of income for the family. And the women and older kids, who were still not legally able to work, their incomes even combined could not cover their dues.

The American dream for many is just that, a dream. But for those who work hard and do things the right way they can be successful and achieve those dreams. But for those like Jurgis who work hard, have never done anything wrong can see their dreams blow away in the wind is just too bad. In America you can work hard and still fail because of the circumstances around you. Or you are the only one out of your family who really attempt to be successful and provide for your family. But the difference in America that brings people from all around the world is that slim opportunity to make it big, make tons of money doing something you like. But for many, like the family in The Jungle it is just a dream.

Treatment of People

“He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten” (27) In The Jungle Upton Sinclair describes the coarse of a Lithuania family coming to a place called Packingtown, Chicago, to live out the “American Dream.” All they wanted was to have a better life for their families and to get a job to support them. They thought coming to America would be a step forward in their lives. They did not have a lot of money to their names, some of them did get jobs in the meatpacking factories. In this novel The Jungle Sinclair unravels two main issues including the treatment of animals which caught the eye of the public , and the treatment of people Sinclairs’ reason for writing this novel. The one that caught my eye is the treatment of people.

“And, for this, at the end of the week, he will carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour-just about his proper share of the million and three quarters of children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.” (85) This quote explains how hard they would work in the factories and only get paid that much. That wouldn’t even put a dent on a rent into today’s age let alone food. I believe they worked really hard and deserve a better pay. In the winter they would have fifteen to sixteen hour work days. The pay wasn’t the only issue. Ona does not return home sometimes. Jurgis wondered why, he eventually got it out of her that her boss, Phil Connor raped her after everyone had left her workplace. He threatened to not let anyone in her household to obtain work or get different jobs. Jurgis goes to Ona’s work and makes Phil go unconscious and is thrown in jail.

You  would think in the jails the police would be nice and treat them fairly, with no physical contact. “On his way to his cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down the wrong corridor, and then added a kick when he was not quick enough;..” (189) I guess that no matter where they were they got treated like they were not even human, like they did not matter to anyone. They were treated really bad it would be hard to even imagine that they actually went through this. “It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull cracked in the melee- in which case they would report that he had been drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to know the difference or to care.” (189) I choose this quote because it explained that no one really knew what went on in the jails. That the people they trusted to protect their families were animals.

In the jails they did get food. “His dinner was “duffers and dope” hunks of dry bread, on a tin plate, and coffee “dope” because it was drugged to keep prisoners quiet.” (190) That wasn’t the only thing shocking about the jails. In the cells there were no windows, and a set of bunk beds. Jurgis lifted the mattress and under there was a layer of roaches. Jurgis got water to wash his cell in the morning. The other prisoners would wait until their cells were so dirty the guards would say something about them.

“They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and a drink-why in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, why did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside-why could the find no better way to punish him then to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?” (191) This quote shows his love for his family and how they are freezing and starving to death since they have no money and loss of income. Jurgis being in jail and Ona being very sick and pregnant they have loss some income they need in order to obtain their residence and feed the children.

Jurgis was one of the hardest workers and he never came close to getting treated fairly. They do strive to get jobs and keep them. All of them do hate their jobs and they are still willing to work in order to create a better life for their family and to support them. They worked their hardest and for what? They didn’t get paid much at all. They worked in horrible conditions, horrible hours, horrible pay, horrible management, horrible everything. The working environments were hazardous and their bosses yelled and cursed all the time at them just for not understanding what they wanted them to do. Even when they yelled did not mean that they understood there were language barriers and not very good communication skills.

“For the struggle was so unfair… Here he was, for instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save Ona from harm, and only a week later she was suffering atrociously, and from the blow of an enemy that he could not possibly have thwarted,” stewed Jurgis (92).
In Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a Lithuanian family suffers many hardships: debt, disappointment, loss of job, and death. Throughout the book, the family repeatedly met with trouble that halted any progress they might have made. The only way that they could survive was if they were willing to sacrifice something. During the course of the book the family gives up their happiness, the children’s education, and their morals. They gave up their happiness in a few forms including giving up traditional rituals (funerals, marriages) and their general cheeriness. The family comes to America with high hopes, and they were immediately let down. There were bad working conditions, awful wages, and inflated prices. The family was doomed from the start. The Jungle presents a society in which there was nowhere “where a man counted for anything against a dollar,” (74). The few high and mighty were willing to go to any measures to make extra money, which created great suffering for people like Jurgis and Ona.
A large part of Chicago’s population was made up of new immigrants. Immigrants were new to the country and therefore naive in the ways of the land. Their ignorance and trusting nature made it easy for large corporations to take advantage of them. For example, “As to the house they had bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about fifteen years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint…The house was one of a whole row that was built by a company which existed to make money by swindling poor people,” (81). Immigrants, excited to be in America and hoping to properly start their lives there, were quick to buy a house. They were ignorant of the fact that they were being cheated, and by the time they found out it was to late. The companies never had any intention of actually letting the immigrant families stay there in the houses. Their goal was to let the families throw away their money on hidden expenses until they inevitably ran out of capitol. When this occurrence came about, the companies would kick the family out.
Also, the companies were cutting corners to make an extra buck with no regard for the public’s health or safety. For instance, “But how could they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that the pale blue milk that they brought around the corner was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde besides,” (93)? Where the immigrants came from, people were nice to each other, the immigrants  never expected the lies that they were being told. That a person would sell someone goods that were not only not what they were supposed to be but also harmful would never have crossed an immigrants mind. They had at least some level of faith in humanity. This endearing quality was soon forced out of them if they had any inclination to survive.

At one point in the book, Jurgis mentions, “But I’m glad I’m not a hog” (46)! He was referring to the hogs journeys to death. They were kept in awful, cramped living spaces in the stockyards until they were needed. When the meat packing companies did decide to use the hogs, the poor swine went through a highly thought out process meant to extract all the money possible out of the hogs.

“In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious – a very river of death… The hogs went up by the power of their own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork… There was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro… it began slowly to revolve… They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft…once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up” (42, 44).

Jurgis didn’t see the similarities between himself and the hogs, which makes it all the more ironic. There he was saying how glad he was that he wasn’t a hog, failing to realize the similarities between the two creatures. The hogs were a mean used to make money for the meat packing companies, just as the immigrants were. The hogs did their job with next to no compensation (just pitiful pens to live in), and the immigrants did their jobs with next to no pay. The pay that they received wasn’t enough to live on so they also ended up dying. The only difference there was that the hogs got an immediate death while the immigrants received a prolonged, tortuous death.

The meat packing companies took in new immigrants, used them until their bodies could no longer handle the work, got rid of them, and then replaced them with the newest onslaught of immigrants.

“All along this east side of the yards ran the railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they would all be empty, and the same thing would be done again” says Sinclair (42).

This quote depicts the continual movement of things, it shows how the animals came and went, how they served the purpose that the company wanted them to serve. They were crowded into small pens to wait for their turn to die to come. This could all be considered a metaphor for how the companies treated the vast majority of their workers. Shipped in, used, and then thrown away for a new shipment of immigrants was the natural progression of an immigrant worker. The workers were merely part of the great packing industry force. The quote, “All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing machine, and now was the time for the renovating of it, and the replacing of damaged parts” very well describes how the companies didn’t view their workers as people (96). If a worker wasn’t fast enough or if his body could no longer handle the daily strains of the hard-labor lifestyle, the companies replaced him without a thought to his or his family’s welfare.

In short, meat packing companies took advantage of the ignorance of immigrants to exploit them. They took many terrible measures to make more money and treated their workers horribly because they could. Immigrants were cheated all around and lived a horrific life of misery; their places of employment- the meat packing companies- can be blamed almost entirely for this. Basically, the big-time companies can be blamed for the little person’s demise.

“They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their children grow up and be strong. And now it was all gone—it would never be! They had played the game and they had lost.” (168)

This is the theme of Upton Sinclair’s scandalous novel The Jungle. The book follows one family’s strenuous journey from Lithuania to the poor and dangerous meatpacking district of Chicago in the very early 1900s.  The main characters, Jurgis and Ona, and various other family members spend their first days in America lost and confused, the language barrier keeping them from communicating with people.  Soon, however, they were able to get jobs, and though they were not glamorous, they enabled the family to buy a house they believed to be brand new. They had to work hard, but they had faith that they would be able to make a truly satisfying life for themselves. After a short time, though, things took a turn for the worse, and they found out that their house was nowhere near as new as they had been told. They discovered that they had to pay interest on their already hard-to-afford house payments. Jurgis, the head of the household, was injured on the job and had to stop working. Throughout the book, life continuously gets more and more tough for the family, and in the end Ona dies and Jurgis, who always believed that hard work was all it took to keep them afloat, is left alone. Their American Dream almost literally crashed and burned all around them. Sinclair wrote a novel that tapped into the lives of thousands of people during that time period, when the American Dream seemed like a far reach for just about everyone.

What is your idea of the American Dream? To most people, including myself, it is success. It is owning your home, having a career that you love and can make a good living with, and to be healthy, happy and free of debts. This has been the promise America has held for immigrants since its beginning in the 1700s. The United States is the land of countless freedoms—freedom of speech, religion, assembly and the press. Citizens have the right to choose how they live their lives and what they make of themselves. In theory, it truly does seem like a dream.

These are the things the Jungle’s characters have in mind as well before they move to America. For a while, it works for them. Things go about as smoothly as one could hope considering they have immigrated across an ocean to a land where they do not know a single soul and cannot speak the language. This smooth sailing does not last for long though, but in reality, what ever does? We can only do our best for so long. After a while, even the greatest of us reaches a breaking point. “I will work harder,” is a phrase Jurgis says often in the beginning of the book. It did not take long before even he could not go on at the breakneck pace he had been setting. The American Dream cannot be achieved without dedication and drive, but sometimes too much of these good things can be a very bad thing. Eventually the stress took a lasting toll on every member of the family, and in many of their cases it led to early death.

What I found myself wondering after I read The Jungle is if it is even possible for anyone to achieve the American Dream. Is there really any chance that a person could work their way from having nothing to having everything they could dream of? Is there a way that I can make a truly good and satisfying life for myself when I set my expectations so high? I suppose this is what a book should do, though isn’t it? It should make you wonder. It should leave you with new questions and insights and thoughts about your life and the lives of the ones around you.

Ultimately the American Dream is what you make of it. There is no doubt, however, that regardless of your own personal definition, the American Dream fails miserably in The Jungle. What matters, though, is how we view the American Dream and its relativity in our lives. What matters is how we see it and how we apply it. The only thing about the American Dream that truly matters is the part of it that you believe matters.

Being a foreigner is no easy task, especially when you are unable to speak or comprehend the language. Jurgis and his family had many hardships to overcome to be able to survive in American. The poor treatment of humans, and the horrible work environments did not help any.

In the beginning of the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis and his family get a sense of what it is like to work in American. “He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not understand a word of it he did not object.”(53) The boss could care less that Jurgis did not understand, he was more worried about why he had not been on time. Jurgis was not able to state his case  that he had been there the whole time due to the language barrier. I picked this quote because it showed some of the barriers people from other countries would have to overcome in order to work and live in america. “The pace they set here, it was one that called for every faculty of a man–from the instant the first steer half-past twelve till heaven only knew what hour in the late afternoon or evening, there was never one instant’s rest  for a man, for his hand or his eye or his brain.”(71) This quote helps to tell you about how the people were used for working in the factory, and how they were used until they could not be used any longer. I chose this quote because it helps you understand the work that the people were expected to do, and how the people were treated while working. “So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething cauldron jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar.”(74) I also chose this quote because it helps you to understand the factory life, and how the workers were treated, and how they treated each other. In the beginning of the book Jurgis and the other working members in his family often get mis treated at work because they are new faces to the factories, and are foreigners.

In chapters 6-11 of The Jungle you learn a lot about how the people were treated. They were not always treated bad, or always treated good either. Jurgis and his family were just foreigners in search of their American dream.

I believe that in many cases the people were treated unfairly. Not only at work, but also outside of work. “With interest thereon monthly, at the rate of percent per annum. And there followed a dead silence. “What does that mean?” asked Jurgis finally almost in a whisper.” (86) In a sense Jurgis and his family had the wool pulled over their eyes. They signed a contract without even knowing everything it entailed. The real estate agent did not trick them, but he also did not tell them about this fee. “The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came, literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each other for a chance of life.”(97) People were so desperate for jobs that they went out early in the morning, in the freezing cold weather in search of jobs. They were never given a Job easily, they always had to work for it. I think the people were treated the way they were treated due to the fact that they were foreign. I feel like the American people were treated way better, simply because they were Americans. I think all the immigrants were treated the same, no matter where they were from. Sometimes the people would work more hours or time than they would actually get payed for. “For fully a week they were quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end of all their troubles. But only ten days after she had joined, Marija’s canning factory closed down, and that blow quite staggered them”(109) The family didn’t fully understand the idea of a union, they assumed it assured them their jobs, while it did not. As you read further in the book you can see the progress the family makes by getting involved, and learning the English language to make survival and life easier. “In piece work they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages, and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time!”(136) The workers got the “short end of the stick” so much was expected of them in so little time. They were never really treated fairly. However, Jurgis was accustoming to the work environment very well and kept up with the other workers in the factory in order to secure his spot in the factory. When Jurgis found out about the treatment of Ona at her work, he was very upset and could not control his anger, and got himself imprisoned. While in jail he was also treated poorly, and had to stay longer due to the fact that he could not afford to pay to get out.

The people never honestly get treated fairly, but they do adapt to the customs and ways of the American culture. They understand how important work is, and how easy it is to let the sight of the american dream slip away. As the book progresses, we see the family going from a naive state, into a state of some intelligence. I feel for the foreigners and the way they are treated, and am glad that they are no longer treated as harshly now-a-days in america. Upton Sinclair does a great job of showing you how people were treated at work, outside of work, and in the community.

Who was really treated worse the animals or the people? In the book The Jungle by: Upton Sinclair it answers that question. This book tells a story of a couple Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite who immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their wedding feast at a bar in a town called Packingtown. The couple and several relatives came to Chicago for a better life, but Packingtown, which is the center of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, is a rough, dangerous, and nasty place where it is very hard to find work. After the reception, Jurgis and Ona find that they are more than a hundred dollars in debt to the saloon keeper. In Lithuania, the custom is that guests at a wedding-feast leave money to cover the cost, but in America, a lot of the immigrants leave the feast without leaving any money. Jurgis plans that he will work harder to make more money. When he finds a job the family signs and agreement to buy a house, but it turns out to be a bad deal; the agreement is full of hidden costs, and the house is poorly maintained. As the family’s living expenses increase the women and children are forced to get jobs. Jobs in Packingtown involved back-breaking labor, conducted in unsafe conditions with little regard for individual workers. Jurgis’s father finds a job only after agreeing to pay another man a third of his wages for helping him obtain the job. But the job is too difficult for he old man, and it kills him. Jurgis, forced to work in an unheated slaughterhouse in which it is difficult to see, risks his life every day by going to work. Jurgis sprains his ankle and is forces to spend nearly three months in bed, unable to work. Though poor working conditions caused the accident, the factory cuts off Jurgis’s pay while he recovers. Jurgis is forced to take a job at the fertilizer plant, the nastiest place in all of Packingtown. He begins to numb himself with alcohol. Ona gets pregnant and Jurgis discovers that her boss, kept her after work and forced her to sleep with him. Jurgis attacks him and is arrested. After an unfair trail, Jurgis is sentenced to a month in prison. His family is again forced to suffer without his work. When is released, he finds out that his family has been evicted from their home. When enter the boardinghouse, he finds Ona screaming; she is prematurely in labor, and the effort of giving birth kills her and baby.
The main theme of the book The Jungle is the treatment of people. The further you get into the book the more clear it becomes that no one had any respect for one another. No one looked out for anymore. It was every man for himself. The workers worked in nasty places with horrible conditions and got paid little. “He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and a half cents an hour, and as it proved a rush day and he worked until nearly seven o’clock in the evening, he went home to the family, with the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a single day!” (54). They chewed people up and spit them out no matter how hard they worked. Examples of these from the book are “…but the man who minded his own business and did his work-why, they would speed him up til they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.” (75) and “szedivilas told him that the packers didnt not even the men who had grown old in their own service-to say nothing of taking on new ones.” (55) The boss’s would quickly replaces workers if they didn’t do exactly what he wanted or if they were to slow. “…and if there was a seconds delay he would fall to cursing”. Jurgis and his whole family came to America in hopes of the so called “American Dream” but the treatment they got didn’t not appear to be what they expected. They thought in America there would be good paying jobs and opportunity to do all the things they ever dreamed of. Instead they got nothing but brutal and unfair treatment. How the people were treated stood out way more than all the rest. The who main point of this book was how the family was treat and the result that came from the harsh real world.

What is your idea of the American Dream? Where do you picture yourself in the future? ”I can work harder”, says Jurgis. To reach your American Dream it takes hard work and determination and your dreams can come true. As for Jurgis hard work did not help. In The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Jurgis had an idea of coming to America from their homeland of Lithuania to get a job and become successful making their family life better. Turns out things were not as easy as they seemed. When they arrived in America it was not what they thought it would be. Jurgis found a job fairly easy but it was not good one by any means. It was hard for them to communicate with people and to be able to deal with business. The family went from being homeless to finding a house. To help pay for the house that they had bought the rest of the family had to also find jobs, which wasn’t as easy since there was not much work and they were not big and could not do physical labor like Jurgis. Money started to become tight, hours were being cut, and family members were becoming ill. In the end Ona died and now Jurgis had no reason to be happy and his idea of the American Dream had broken into pieces leaving him with nothing.

My idea of the American Dream is to get a good education, get a good paying  job, have a great family,to have no worries, and to have an overall good and successful life which is some ways is similar to the American Dream of Jurgis. We both just want the best for our family as for ourselves. For me I hope my American Dream comes true unlike how Jurgis who lost some of the things closest to him as well as all hope of his idea of the American Dream coming true. I asked a few people in my family what their idea of the American Dream was and their responses were both some what similar to my idea. When I asked my grandma she said, “My idea is to let my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to live in peace. To keep our country free without debts. I also want the United States to believe in God.” Her American Dream is to benefit others. She does not say anything about herself, she would rather have everyone around her to be happy which in return makes her happy. Jurgis worked so hard. He did not want to make his families lives hard. In the end it did not turn out how he wanted it to be, as for my grandma her American Dream for the most part has come true and she could not be happier. Another person I asked for their idea of the American Dream was my dad and he said, “The American Dream is for life to be easy. For everyone to get along, for there to be no poverty, or war. For everyone to have no problems in their lives. Also for our country to always to be free.” Jurgis and his family came to America to come and make money to get their family out of poverty. They wanted to start fresh, get married, and further their lives for the best, but from the time that they arrived in America their problems never got any better and their worlds all came crashing down.

Everyone has a different idea of the American Dream. Some are big ideas some are small ideas some are selfish some are for the better of others everyone is different. American Dreams do not always come true as for Jurgis he came to America with his whole family. They left their lives in Lithuania to come to America a foreign place to them where they could not speak the language, they did not know anyone, and they had no where to live. Their lives became very hard and stressful very quickly. Work, money, and family issues started pulling them apart. In the end the death of the love of his life put Jurgis over the top leaving him with nothing crushing all his hopes of ever being happy all hopes of his idea in the beginning of his American Dream. On the other hand my American Dream is on the right track. I am not shooting for anything spectacular but I want to live life to the fullest becoming successful and to not have any kind of worries in my life. Not money, family, or a job. So far I am making all the right decisions to keep on the path of reaching my goal of my American Dream.