– + Critic. 49: 287. S. ’06. 80w.
“The story, powerful as it is, is too ‘unpleasant’ to commend itself to the wider reading public.”
– + N. Y. Times. 11: 302. My. 12, ’06. 600w.
Sinclair, Upton Beall, jr. [Jungle.] †$1.50. Doubleday.
Chicago in its worst industrial phases is the scene of Mr. Sinclair’s story. His hero is a sturdy Lithuanian who, with a little colony of fellow countrymen, including the frail Ona whom he would wed, settles in the Packingtown district. It is first as a wage-earner—the victim of foremen’s immoral practices and of real estate sharks’ trickery—that Jurgis Rudkus struggles; worsted in his battle, and yielding to exhaustion and hopelessness, he becomes a tramp, a common thief, a highwayman, a beggar. Temporary respite comes with the protection offered by a corrupt political machine whose bosses secure him work. He looked out on “a world in which nothing counted but brutal might, an order devised by those who possessed it for the subjugation of those who did not.” Finally the “saving grace” of socialism is balm for his industrial grievances, and here the author expatiates upon the salutary virtues of socialism.
“Is one of the strongest and most powerful voices of protest against a great wrong that has appeared in America.”
+ + Arena. 35: 651. Je. ’06. 5780w.
“It is a book that holds the attention by its vividness, earnestness, and simplicity.”
+ – Ath. 1906, 1: 446. Ap. 14. 240w.