Sinclair's Beef

From our lifestyles to the age we retire at, our jobs have a huge effect on our lives. In few other places do we spend nearly as much time or take as seriously. Our work schedule alone determines when we wake up, when we can do the things we want to do, and how we do them. Apart from that, the type of job we work has a deep effect on our lives. If one works the nightshift at the local supermarket, one must sleep at non-standard times. If one works at a desk all day, one may feel contained and voraciously devour social participation. One may bring home the habits they are used to at work, such as organizing and mental state. It is safe to say that our jobs are one of the largest determinates in what kind of life we lead, and even whether we are pleased or depressed. For this reason, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle didn't have nearly the effect he had hoped.

The book follows the long-drawn and painful sufferings of a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis. He, like the flocks of others taken by surprise upon entering America, is met by the ravaging hordes at the gate and systematically torn to pieces. He becomes impoverished and looses his wife and son in the novel, and finds himself nearly destroyed by a wide-eyed attempt to live the American dream. At the end of the novel, he discovers socialism as the cure for all his pains and wildly supports the party, throwing nearly his whole life into it. While this culmination was intended to the be the crux of the novel, showing that socialism is the cure for the pains of the working class, the point was missed by most people.

Nearly all of Jurgis's suffering is the result of his various jobs throughout the novel: he is forced to live the lifestyle he does because he cannot afford real food and adequate housing for his family.  His wife dies because he cannot pay for a good midwife, and his baby dies because he cannot afford to be at home to watch him. In fact, none of the family can. They work night and day simply to support themselves, from the oldest to the youngest. The young Stanislovas Lukoszaite goes to work along with Dede Antanas, who is aging and clearly unfit for work. Even so, with the whole family working as hard as possible to keep alive, they can still barely makes ends meet. They are subjected to the worst sufferings of human existence, faced with death, terrible housing, rag-tag clothing, and insufferable mental confinement. All this creates an inescapable prison that locks the family into a fight with the system that is slowing destroying them: the American city.

Reading the novel, it's very easy to find yourself overwhelmed with the suffering the family must face. It is a bitter pill to swallow, that life was once that way for many immigrants and continues to be as such for many more in varying places about the globe. You find yourself deeply focused on the suffering of Jurgis and his family, just as incapable of escaping it as he is. When the solution is finally proposed at the end, all you can think is "preposterous." Most people now do not accept socialism as a capable fix, and would not have then. What people think is reform. People see Jurgis's suffering and want to change it, and think of the reforms that could be passed, the laws that could be enforced to change things. People do not wish to adopt an entirely new form of government simply to fix someone else's problems: they want to fix them with as little affect on their own lives as possible. This, in part, is what made the novel unsuccessful in it's mission.

Moreover, the suffering of Jurgis is not felt with the brain: it is felt with the heart and body, or perhaps the stomach. People do not see the suffering of Jurgis with a way to change it, they simply feel and identify deeply with his suffering. Their intellect shuts off and they see suffering and wish to amend it, using the most acceptable means as possible. For most people, this is not socialism, but reform of the current system. People grow to hate the judge and the bosses, but do not want the courts and the jobs abolished. They want to improve their state.

What changed the impact of the novel so greatly, however, has yet to be mentioned. While America may have identified with the suffering of the family, the greatest interest was in a smaller, seemingly insignificant portion of the book. People saw the way the meat they ate was produced and the terrible conditions through which their food progressed. This sickened most people, as they thought of the meat product they had bought perhaps only yesterday, and found themselves suddenly and understandably disgusted. They sought reform as soon as possible, refusing to purchase meat. America was then sick to her stomach, revolted by the beef industry.

As Sinclair said, "I aimed for America's heart, but hit the stomach." Distracted by the problems in the beef industry, the public completely missed the point of the novel, which existed as a socialist pamphlet, a soapbox from where Sinclair soliloquized. People, as they are wont to do, focused on their own problems, throwing aside those of Jurgis and his family to take on their own. Instead of seeing socialism as they cure for a corrupt system, they saw green pieces in their meat and rallied for cleaner and healthier food. America, one again, did not thing about the whole so much as the individual, to personally minded to noticed the rest of the problems with the country.

All in all, Sinclair failed at promoting Socialism with his novel. He instead drew too much attention to the meat industry and didn't establish enough credibility in his solution. People were simply unwilling to accept the need for a remodeling of the American system, and instead tried to put patches on what they could, clogging holes where they could see them. They ended with a patchwork government, too focused on fixing the myriad of problems intrinsic to the system rather they trying to work towards the most intelligent solution.  Sinclair suffered the fate of man teenagers, woefully misunderstood. His novel became an expose of the meat industry more than anything else, and is still regarded as such. Unsuccessful but provocative, if Sinclair's novel had promoted as much interest in government as it had in beef, we might find ourselves with each giving according to his ability, and each receiving according to his needs.