Their decision to immigrate to Chicago is met with a series of encounters with corrupt agents and officials. More of Jurgis's and Ona's life in Lithuania is revisited. Jurgis looks for work and is temporarily hired at Brown and Company. Jurgis and Ona's past in Lithuania is revisited. Jurgis and Ona celebrate their wedding, however so little money is received from the guest that Jurgis can't pay for the reception. As such the book is deeply supportive of values and criticisms held by Communism, a movement still in its infancy at the time.
Sinclair wanted to show how the mainstream parties of American politics, already being tied into the industrial-capitalist machine, offered little means for progressive change. The novel is also an important example of the “muckraking” tradition begun by journalists such as Jacob Riis. The sad state of turn-of-the-century labor is placed front and center for the American public to see suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American “wage slavery”. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, complete absence of social security, scandalous living and working conditions, and generally utter hopelessness prevalent among the have-nots, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of the haves. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century. The Jungle is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair.
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