Classic Review - The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Jungle is a book written by Upton Sinclair in 1906.

It is an excellent book that I would recommend reading if you love classics! If you are not partial to really sad stories or political messages then you can pass it up for a different classic, however I feel like it is worth the read.

The Jungle was written originally in order to try to further the idea of Socialism in America but instead lead to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. I had wanted to read the book just on the basis that it helped create the FDA!

If you are interested in reading the effects that the Jungle had on this country, be sure to read the
Wikipedia entry.

Scott, if you are reading this, the spoiler is about to start. So even though I finished before you, keep reading!

To all other readers: if you are interested in reading The Jungle do not read the rest of the post. Please enjoy the novel first and then come back to this.

If you find yourself without a copy, feel free to download it for reading from Project Gutenberg.

**** SPOILER ****

The first part of this book is the saddest piece of fiction that I've ever read. In the beginning we meet Jurgis and Ona, a Lithuanian couple who have just immigrated from Lithuania with their family and a few close friends. They arrive in Chicago looking for jobs and head towards "Packingtown".

Why is the book so sad?

Well, to run down a quick list:

Antanas, a grandfather gets a job in a packing plant where he has to stand in blood up to his ankles. His foot gets an infection and he loses his job and gets sick. While he sick he only gets worse and eventually dies.

Ona has a baby and that is fine but when she has her 2nd baby, the 2nd baby tries to come at the end of her 2nd trimester and she ends up dying and so does the baby.

Jurgis' first child is out playing in front of his house on the sidewalk, when the wooden sidewalk gives way. The boy falls into water and drowns.

The family gets a house that they are told is new. It is not. They are also told one payment of $7 per month for rent however they do not understand this is only interest and doesn't include taxes or any other fees associated with the house. There is a constant struggle to keep jobs in order to pay for this after their agreement so that they do not loose the house. However even after sending out three children under 12 years old into Chicago to sell newspapers in order to contribute to the family fund they still loose the house.

How do they loose the house? Jurgis finds out that Ona is being "taken advantage of" by an Irish boss named Connor. He goes and finds Connor and attacks him in a Packingtown Plant. It looks as if he has attacked him unprovoked. As Connor has some ties with corrupt politicians and judges, Jurgis is sent to jail.

Jurgis goes to jail another time and is eventually swindled out of his entire savings.

All of those sad things happen not necessarilly in the order that I gave them, but they do all happen. There seems to be a stream of worsening conditions of sadness through the first part of the book.

The book though can ultimately be broken into three separate sections: family, solitude, and socialism.

The first third/half of the book is Ona, Jurgis, and family trying to make an honest living. They do make a great effort at it but the system is set against them based on their honesty.

The second part of the book is after Ona and both babies die. Jurgis becomes a tramp and also decides to become a criminal. He has lost all ties that would keep him an honest moral man. He abandons his former life in order to survive and with crimes to then thrive.

The final part of the book is about Socialism. He suffers the loss of all of his savings by being swindled by another crook. Jurgis had attacked Connor again in a drunken rage and although he could have avoided jail with a much lower amount than $300, he is in such a panic that he is lead to believe that this is the amount that will allow him to avoid jail.

Without money he finds a hall where there are speeches about Socialism and after a few nights he finally decides to listen. When he finally hears what the man on the stage is talking about he starts to buy into the "wage slavery" that the man is trying to fight. We find that Jurgis becomes a convert to Socialism and gets lucky in finding a job and board in a hotel.

**** End of SPOILER ****

I found 2/3 of the book to be very satisfying and the last 1/3 to be bland and more of a political statement (of which really was the reason that Upton Sinclair wrote the book). Overall I believe it was a really good novel, but longer than it needed to be.

There is an excellent article I encourage you to read on Slate by Karen Olsson titled Welcome to the Jungle. Does Upton Sinclair's Famous Novel Hold Up?.

If you have read it, what did you think?

If you have decided to skip it, why?

I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments about it.

Classic Review - Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton

Madame de Treymes is a short story written by Edith Wharton in 1907.

You can read it at Project Gutenberg (Text Only) or for HTML or PDF versions here.

It is available as a "Penguin 60's Classic" from Amazon.com. If you like Edith Wharton or short small editions of classics I would recommend this.

Penguin 60's Classics are smaller and can literally fit in your pocket. Here is Madame de Treymes next to "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair:



Do not read the rest of this post if you are interested in reading Madame de Treymes.

**** SPOILER ****
This short story is really good yet can be pretty dense to read. Edith Wharton seems to never have had a hard time to make a sentence last forever (or in some cases half of a page). However in my opinion this adds to the class that this title provides. It is a wonderful story filled with lots of words I had to look up - and add to my vocabulary - and was entrenching enough that I continuously wanted to pick it up even when I knew I had other things I had to get done rather than read.

The only issue I have with this story is that it is definitely "timed". What I mean by that (I can't think of the exact word this moment) is that it was written in a time when the situation that is presented was probably very plausible but now in our day and age would not really be capable of happening. I mean it is possible but it would be very remote and obtuse.

The main character of the story John Durham would like to marry Madame de Malrive. Madame de Treymes is Madame de Malrive's cousin. The main crux of the story hinges on Mr. Durham wanting to marry Fanny Frisbee (the pre-Madame de Malrive) and Madame de Malrive not yet having a divorce from Monsiour de Malrive. What completely provides the pivot of why they cannot be together is that Madame de Malrive has a son and that son has been raised (along with Madame de Malrive after her marriage) in the Catholic faith. She does not want to depart from her son or have him taken away and she is afraid that will happen if she is granted a divorce from Monsiour de Malrive and then run away with Mr. Durham.

Throughout the story we follow Mr. Durham as he pledges to try and win Madam de Treymes influence in order for her to sway the family to allow Madam de Malrive a divorce so that she can marry Mr. Durham. One is led to believe that Mr. Durham may just be able to have the situation turn out the way that he hopes. He works with Madam de Treymes to allow Madam de Malrive to divorce.

Just when he is about to return to Paris to be with Madame de Malrive - to the life they had hoped for, Madam de Treymes allows herself to speak candidly with Mr. Durham about what she wanted out of the bargain to help him get the divorce for Madam de Malrive. Unfortunately and tragically what she wants is for the son to be taken away from Madam de Malrive to live with the family, because the family is more important that any one individual. Madam de Treymes confesses that while they are losing one individual in Madam de Malrive they are preserving the family by taking custody of the son upon the divorce.

So why do I say that this isn't something that could happen in our time? I only say that because Madam de Treymes says that the French courts have precedents where the father would keep the son no matter what the Mother's situation is (ie a better parent, a fit parent, has an income and home, etc) simply because he is Catholic and would retain him as Catholic. It is apparent that the custody of the son would be given to the father simply because it would be known that she had wanted to initiate the divorce instead of him and that because divorce is strictly forbidden to Catholics that this would be a sin against the family. It would be viewed as her trying to break up the family to pursue her life of sin.

There is an interesting point brought up about how Madame de Malrive would view Mr. Durham as an extension of her family - a new family. However this is viewed the opposite way by Madam de Treymes and the Malrive family. The mis-communication and assuming by both Madam de Treymes and Mr. Durham that each has the other's interests at heart is what makes this story woven together so nicely. It is a tragic story but nonetheless a very good one.

Perhaps getting a divorce today and having the son go to the father simply because he is Catholic is true today but I doubt it. Even if it is true, my initial thought was, "Why can't they just leave the country?" Oh how the times have changed since 1907.

**** End of SPOILER ****

This was a very quick and satisfying read. It was also my first title by Edith Wharton. I have to say that I think she will be one of my favorite authors to read. She is very witty with the situations that she puts her characters in and obviously had a very good command of the English language.

Have you read this?
Have you even heard of it?

I'd like to hear what you think!

Also a quick shout out to my buddy Scott Hall who has started The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I wanted to let you know that as of tonight I'm right there with you! Look for it in an upcoming Classic Book Review.

Classic Review - Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

If you get a chance to read Looking Backward and like classic novels in the utopian/dystopian genre then you will enjoy this book by Edward Bellamy.

Before I give my review, the following links will help you get a copy of the text if you have not read the book:

Project Gutenberg text file
HTML of entire book

Do not read the rest of this post if you are interested in reading Looking Backward.

**** SPOILER ****
Looking Backward takes a very unique approach to explain how a man was able to "travel" through time to a century not his own. In Looking Backward the main character has a separated underground sound-proof room that he uses in order to fall asleep when he is unable to sleep in normal conditions (because of noise outside of his house in the late 1880's). His usual Doctor is out of town, so a traveling Doctor hypnotizes him in his sound-proof room. During the night the house burns down and nobody knows that he is in the room. Since he is hypnotized, his body shuts down to near death almost like hibernation. This is how he is able to sleep from 1887 to the year 2000.

Waking up in Boston in the year 2000, the main character speaks to a Dr. Leete and his daughter Edith in order to find out what has changed since his time.

I was shocked and surprised to read that Edward Bellamy had the idea of "credit cards" as of 1887 when this was written. Simply stating that cards could be given to individuals and could be re-loaded with 'credits' that could be used to purchase goods, be transferred to other individuals, and could be empied out and then re-filled is absolutely amazing to me. It is quite possible that this book helped further that idea into the credit card era that we have today.

What I liked and found plausible about this book:

• Credit cards as previously mentioned.


• I could see how having warehouses in each district could technically be possible. It reminds me of Sam's Club or Costco.
  
• Ability to have music in your room and to turn it off and on at will
  
• That however unlikely it is in reality, that everyone had a purpose and was able to get along in society contributing equally to each other's happiness.
  

What I disliked and had a hard time believing about this book:

• No more money. Replaced by credits. That is hard for me to believe.
  
• That people would retire at 45, although I do understand that a person's life span was dramatically reduced. It just seems unlikely to me.
  
• The odds of Edith Leete being the great-grandaughter of his fiance Edith, and Edith Leete falling for the main character, AND her dad watching their relationship and approving it, AND everything working out for them to marry etc seemed a bit out of line for only knowing each other for only a week. Again though - I understand that times were completely different and that people did get married in much faster circumstances at times.
  
• The way that they book ended by having the nightmare chapter followed by the dream chapter simulating a double dream that countered each other. I wasn't really a fan of that.
  

With all of that said, I did immensly enjoy this classic book. It was a very quick read. It was very interesting to see how a writer writing in the year 1887 actually thought what Boston would turn into in the year 2000. He was completely and totally off in regards to what Boston ended up being in the year 2000, but it was very entertaining and included a romantic element to a story that otherwise might be considered a dry socialist outcome for society.

**** End of SPOILER ****

Some more in-depth links:
Wikipedia Entry
SparkNotes Summary
SparkNotes Analysis

I would highly recommend reading this book!

If you have read it, what do you think of it? I'm interested to hear your opinions!