Publisher's Synopsis
Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the timeBecause of a commission for the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks working incognito in the Chicago slaughterhouses, more than enough time to write a novel, The Jungle, which became one of the most influential of the century XX.Sinclair tells us in this work the life of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Chicago with his family in search of a job and, consequently, of a better life. But the American dream that serves as a motor for their sacrifices will be reduced to nothing when they have to face inhuman working conditions and the social injustices that are found when they arrive in the United States. Beaten by a greedy and completely corrupt system, Jurgis will learn that the only way to survive in that jungle in which he has fallen is the revolution of the proletariat and joint work.Thus, what we have in our hands is not just a novel about the problems that a family of immigrants has to make a place in the new world. What Sinclair offers us, however, is a fierce critique of capitalism through the crudest (and sometimes quite unpleasant) description of the Chicago slaughterhouses, their bad practices, the plight of workers and workers. continuous frauds and deceptions suffered by the proletariat (and immigrants in particular). All this ends up translating into a series of necessary demands so that both the lives of workers and society in general are better: the right to housing, education, decent working conditions ... which results in an approach of the protagonist towards socialism, apparently the only way to make the hole in which a better place lives.Although the literary value of this work is undeniable, it is also unquestionable that The jungle will be remembered for the revolution that caused its publication (more than a century ago, let's not forget it) and that it resulted in the adoption of new laws that controlled the food handling and at the beginning of a struggle for workers' rights.And, seeing the one that is falling, I could not imagine a better occasion to reissue this book and be aware of the place we came from and to which we could unfortunately return.