Socialism in the Jungle

Jurgis has gone a little off of the deep end. He found out that Ona had been being molested by a man at her work. Naturally, he lost his temper and pounded the guys face in. For this he had to spend some time in jail. By the time he got out and walked home Ona was in the midst of a terrible and painful premature labor. She dies before the end of the night. He is able to find a new job before long and works through his grief. They lost the house while he was in jail and now the 10 of them lived in a garret of another poor woman. Jurgis comes home one day and finds that his toddler has died. His baby was the reason he spent his days toiling. He simply walked off and never returned. After a couple hundred pages of tragedy Jurgis, in his total loss, is free. He moves from place to place tramping. He works and blows his money and his life is good. He is finally able to live in fresh air and clean himself in cool natural water. He spends any money he makes so he is still broke. Out in the country, being broke doesn’t matter. It is only when he returns to the city does money count again. He gets a great job back in Chicago digging for the new subway system that is being placed underground only to get his arm broken due to the dangerous nature of the work. After his stay in the hospital he cannot work and has no place to go. He becomes a beggar.
I don’t normally like to spend this much time summarizing but a lot has happened to Jurgis only for him to be right back where he started. This is a recurring theme throughout the novel. No matter how much good luck comes his way, the entire system he lives in keeps him from coming up on top. His life was the happiest and easiest when he was living as a tramp, outside of the system. Only by abandoning society was he able to live like a man. The flaw is the system, not the man who suffers trying to work within it. It is obvious that ‘The Jungle’ is a commentary on the failure of the system. To be more specific, the failures of a society that thrives on competition.
The rest of the novel is a detailed explanation of why socialism is the answer to all the problems presented in the story thus far. Jurgis’s luck turns around after crashing a socialist meeting which instills in him an insatiable thirst for knowledge about how America really works and how it can be changed to work for proletariats like himself instead of against them. He then gets a job working at a hotel for a member of the socialist movement which provides him with the money needed to get by and support his old family. He meets socialist thinkers who through their speeches and conversations with others share the ideals of socialism with the reader. For anyone curious about the tenants of socialism, this is a rich resource.
Upton Sinclair wrote this book to share the plight of the working families and offer socialism as a solution to the injustice being suffered by so many in America. The latter section of the novel may lose a readers attention given the preachy nature and therefore it is no surprise that when this book came out people were a lot more interested in the exposure of the disgusting conditions that their food was being produced in than the deplorable conditions the workers were dealing with. The Jungle led to better food inspection but couldn’t get a socialist leader elected into any powerful offices.