The Jungle
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a novel portraying the corruption of the American meat industry in the early part of the twentieth century. The dismal living and working conditions and sense of hopelessness prevalent among the impoverished workers is compared to the corruption of the rich. Upton aimed to make such "wage slavery" issues center-stage in the minds of the American public. Despite already being serialized, it was rejected as a novel five times before being published in 1906, when it quickly became a bestseller.
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.
