The Jungle: Response

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

I’m not sure if our standards for food safety have improved after reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I remember reading parts of the text that said that the animals that they were going to slaughter had died from other diseases and were being packed and shipped out anyway.
Gross.

 The conditions of the residents living in Chicago were horrific. People, including children, were living in overcrowded areas that were infested with vermin and unsafe to live in, also, their neighborhood smelled of feces and rotting animal flesh, calling this portion of Chicago, “packingtown.” By what I read, the family seemed to have been swindled into buying a house under the conditions of it being a rental until it is paid off, simply because if it is considered a rental it would make it easier for people to be evicted.

I can relate a lot of what we read in The Jungle to the group conversations about the book Slaughterhouse. Like the book, Sinclair had depicted people working at extremely fast rates and in miserable conditions to meet some sort of goal. I remember when we had talked about this in class that we addressed the issue of job safety and how this occupation is linked to high cases of depression.
Reading the Wikipedia article on The Jungle, it appears that Jurgis loses his way and eventually becomes a hobo.

Personally, I’m thankful that the book had made significant changes to our sanitation and packaging of our foods but I really don’t think we’ve made significant strides since then on both the grounds of the treatment of our workers and the safety and quality of our food. Still today you hear people discussing the high amounts of hormones and toxins in the beef that we eat on a regular basis from McDonalds, Burger King, etc.

If I can take something away from reading this section of The Jungle, it would be that vegetarianism doesn’t sound so bad now.