The Jungle
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
The Jungle, a novel by American journalist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), was written in 1906 to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants living in Chicago and similar industrialized cities in the United States.
While his main goal in describing the working conditions in the meat industry was based on an investigation he conducted for a socialist newspaper with the goal of advancing socialism in the United States, most readers were more concerned with several of the passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century.
It greatly contributed to a public outcry, which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair famously said of the public reaction, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
The book depicts working-class poverty amid a lack of social support, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a sense of hopelessness among the many workers. These elements contrasted greatly with the deeply rooted corruption of the people in power. A review by writer Jack London called it the “Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."
Sinclair had spent seven weeks working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards while gathering information for the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason. As a journalist who exposed corruption in government and business, he was considered a “muckraker.”
He first published The Jungle in serial form in the newspaper in 1905 and it was then published as a book in 1906.
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.
