50 Pages of The Jungle

I read chapters 2- 5 of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. 

These chapters really brought to mind the reading I did of Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz. 

This man named Jurgis brought his family and the family of the woman that he planned on marrying, Ona, from Lithuania to America in search of a better life (about 12 people).
Knowing almost no English, they run into many troubles, including losing much of their small amount of money to swindlers before they finally find a man who was from Lithuania too. This man helps them by telling them about a cheap place for them to stay at while they get their feet on the ground.

This place was not nice in any sense of the word, but it was good enough for them to stay at for the moment. Jurgis wanted his future bride to have every nicety that he thought she deserved and would not even let her try to get a job when the rest of them went out looking. Because he was such a large man, he stood out in the crowd, outside of Brown's, of men trying to find work and within a short time was asked to come back at 7am the next day. Of course Jurgis was excited about finding work at the slaughterhouse, not knowing what the rest of us have learned in class about the terrible things that go on inside them. Jurgis actually went on a tour of the slaughterhouse before his first day on the job, which is what many of us will be doing on Friday. The tour only managed to brighten his thoughts of the factory, of course, because all the tourists were shown the brighter sides of the process. The only part that people seemed to be disturbed by during the tour was the killing of the pigs. The people humanized these pigs, thinking that they looked so innocent and went into their deaths so trustingly. This did not bother Jurgis, as he was so amazed by all the things he was being told about how the whole process made sure to not waste any parts of the animals and other such achievements. He did not even notice when an inspector stopped to tell the group about how his job was to check the animals to make sure they did not have any diseases or other things that would keep them from being edible. And as he spoke to the group, several cattle passed right by him unchecked.

The part of this story that caused me the most anxiety is when the family decided they wanted a house, and decided to go to an agent about a house they saw advertized. In my mind, that whole house sale process was a scam. I wanted to cry with them when they did not believe that first lawyer who told them that the deal was legit. In other classes I have had, we read about how people would take advantage of immigrants in their situation and take every last cent that they had. So when Jurgis, in his rage and fear, ran to another lawyer and was told again that the document was correct I breathed a sigh of relief with him.