The Jungle
A Novel
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The classic protest novel that exposed harsh working conditions and unsanitary practices in the meatpacking industry
A slaughterhouse worker from Lithuania, Jurgis Rudkus immigrated to turn-of-the-century Chicago believing that he would find freedom and prosperity. Instead, meager wages and a filthy, dangerous workplace drive him deep into debt and despair. Victimized, abused, and utterly alone, Jurgis and his wife, Ona, face a lifetime of never-ending struggle in a merciless urban jungle.
An extraordinary work of fiction based in cold, hard fact, The Jungle is one of the most influential novels ever written. Privately published in 1906, it quickly became an international bestseller, inspiring sweeping and essential changes, including the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Powerful and provocative, poignant and horrifying, The Jungle is Upton Sinclair's masterwork.
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1991 as part of a short-lived revival of the Classics Illustrated line, this adaptation of Sinclair's muckraking socialist novel succeeds because of its powerful images. When Kuper initially drew it, he was already a well-known left-wing comics artist. His unenviable task is condensing a 400-page novel into a mere 48 pages, and, inevitably, much of the narrative drama is lost. Kuper replaces it, however, with unmatched pictorial drama. The story follows Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkis and his family as they are eaten up and spit out by capitalism (represented by Chicago's packing houses). Kuper uses an innovative full-color stencil technique with the immediacy of graffiti to give Sinclair's story new life. When Jurgis is jailed for beating the rich rapist Connor, a series of panels suffused with a dull, red glow draw readers closer and closer to Jurgis's face, until they see that the glint in his eye is fire. Jurgis, briefly prosperous as a strong-arm man for the Democratic machine, smokes a cigar; the smoke forms an image of his dead son and evicted family. Perhaps most visually dazzling is the cubist riot as strikers battle police amid escaping cattle. Kuper infuses this 1906 novel with the energy of 1980s-era street art and with his own profoundly original graphic innovation, making it a classic in its own right.
