Pronounced “the

of wage slavery” by Jack London, Upton Beall Sinclair’s bestselling

ranks among the most influential and enduring pieces of American social protest fiction. Adapting the journalistic approach of earlier muckraking exposés such as Jacob Riis’s

(1890) and Lincoln Steffens’s

(1904),

traces the inevitable demise of Jurgis Rudkus and his family – poor Lithuanian immigrants whose American Dream is viciously crushed by the predatory capitalist environment of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. Shifting from a documentary style to blunt didacticism, the last third of the novel chronicles the rebirth of Jurgis as a proletarian hero, who finds salvation in socialism.

Not

2713 words

Citation: Piep, Karsten. "The Jungle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=458, accessed 25 November 2024.]