The Jungle

Upton Sinclair, 1906

Upton Sinclair’s novel of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who brings his family to Chicago to work in the stockyards and meatpacking plants of Packingtown, and of the hardships they meet there.

Start reading32 chapters, about 151,000 words

Famous quotes

To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat⁠—and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.
Chapter IIn context
- Failure
- Motivation & Goals
They were trying to save their souls⁠—and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
Chapter XXIIIIn context
- Religion
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Freedom
- Money
There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system⁠—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed!
Chapter XXVIIIIn context
- Economics
- Money
The working-man was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience⁠—in short to all the pseudo-virtues of capitalism.
Chapter XXXIIn context
- Economics
- Religion

Famous quotes

Contents