The Jungle Themes & Topics

The Jungle Thematic Overview

Before the publication of The Jungle, Sinclair commented in the Appeal, a socialist journal, that his novel would "set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profits. It will shake the popular heart and blow the roof off of the industrial tea-kettle."

Critics have generally viewed his success in this plan as at least as mixed as his metaphor. Breaking human hearts requires more skill in characterization than Sinclair possessed, but blowing off roofs (or lids) is essential to effective propaganda, and in this he succeeded most admirably.

Still, Sinclair's theme, or intended theme, was clearly broader than his novel's effect. Concerned with all the evils suffered by wage earners under a capitalistic system and the certain lessening of those evils under socialism, Sinclair devoted only a few pages to his description of the shocking...
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