The Jungle

Natalia Fernández Pérez

American Literature VI. Group 41

Social Darwinism, or the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ in

the Industrial Society of The Jungle

The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair in 1906. Sinclair was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, who devoted his career as a writer to documenting and criticizing the social and economic conditions of the early 20th century in both fiction and non-fiction novels. He exposed his view of the injustices of Capitalism and the overwhelming impact of the poverty. Sinclair is known by giving in The Jungle a sharp indictment of unregulated capitalism, exemplified in the meatpacking industry. His descriptions of both the unsanitary conditions and the inhumane conditions experienced by the workers shocked and galvanized readers. Sinclair had intended it as an attack upon capitalist enterprise, but readers reacted viscerally. Towards the end of the 19th century, the United States entered a period of growth and industrialisation, as the theories of Darwin about the ‘survival of the fittest’ were taking form. Since we read the novel’s title, we find out that the race for the existence is present throughout the whole book. In order to do the analysis, I mainly intent to focus on the character of Jurgis Rudkus, who Sinclair used to capture the competition to survive against the clock in an industrial society.

To begin with, it appears to me I should talk about the origin of The Jungle. Sinclair published five novels between 1901 and 1906, but none of them generated much income. Late in 1904, the editors of the popular socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason sent Sinclair to Chicago to examine the lives of stockyard workers. He spent seven weeks in the city’s meatpacking plants, learning every detail about the work itself, the lives of workers, and the structure of the business. Thus, The Jungle was born from this research and was first published in serial form in Appeal to Reason. The first few publishers whom...