Upton Sinclair was born September 20, 1878 in Baltimore Maryland to parents Beall and Priscilla Sinclair. Growing up, he loved to read books, and started school at the late age of 10 years old. His father was an alcoholic who never kept a good job, and was always moving. After graduating in college in 1897, he focused on writing, and in 1904, went undercover to work at a meatpacking plant to research his novel The Jungle. From 1917 to the 1920s, he was a part of the socialist party, a main idea of the book. Most of the things in his life, specifically the alcoholic father, Meatpacking, and socialist party, are very prevalent in the book, and after researching, you can see why they were to him.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel. In this book, the …show more content…
Jurgis and Ona, and her family are from Lithuania, and make enough money to move to the Chicago. The book opens with their wedding that they had saved enough money from working in factories and plants to have. They struggle to survive as they start to see that America is anything but a dream. They scavenge enough money to buy an old rickety house that they can’t really afford. They fall into debt. A few members of their family die, including children, Rudkus’ father, and Jonas. Rudkus is injured and fired from the meat packing plant, and gets hired at a fertilizer plant. Ona confesses that she was raped by her boss, and had sex with him to keep her job, so Rudkus attacks him, and goes to jail. Rudkus returns from jail, where his wife dies in childbirth with his child. He leaves town and takes up drinking, becoming an alcoholic. He returns to Chicago and finds work in labor, and con-man jobs. He stumbles into a socialist, and finds purpose in his life through socialism. He finds his wife's family, and begins to support them again. The end of the book is a socialist