Working Class Of Chicago's Packingtown example essay topic

Some novels and plays portray the consequences that occur when individuals pursue their own personal good at the expense of the common good of the group or society. Choose a novel or play, and write a well-organized essay that explains how the interests of a character or group of characters conflict with the common good and produce dire consequences for another group or society. Avoid plot summary. Conflicting Interests Many immigrants are moving to the United States in the early 1900's with the hopes of living the "American Dream". However, that glittering American lifestyle is merely a distant ideal for the immigrants living in Packingtown, the Lithuanian meatpacking district of Chicago. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle portrays life through the eyes of a poor workingman struggling to survive in this cruel environment, where the desire for profit among the capitalist meatpacking bosses and the criminals makes the lives of the working class a nearly unendurable struggle for survival.

To begin, life among the working class sways with the corruption among the meatpacking bosses, or packers, and the criminals. Residents of Packingtown must have money to pay the inflated prices of food and shelter in order to survive the freezing winters of Chicago. Jurgis, the protagonist of the novel, being a big, strong, young man, has no trouble acquiring a job in the beginning of the novel. He is prime material for the packers of the industry. Jurgis can keep up with the outrageously strenuous pace set by the packers in order to get as much profit as possible out of their workers. However, Jurgis's father, Dede Antanas, being an old, frail man, struggles to find work in order to support the large family, but his share of income is needed nonetheless.

One of the packers sees the old man's need for work and makes him an offer. If Antanas will pay one third of his wages to this packer, then he has found a job. This sort of exploitation runs rampant throughout the stockyards. The packers and criminals have control of nearly everything in Packingtown including politics. As Jurgis eventually realizes, .".. the packers had been equivalent to fate... They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people" (311).

Mike Scully, a corrupt political boss, decides who will win local elections and the majority of the time the votes are supplied through one form of bribery or another and his candidate wins. Laws make no difference in Packingtown. Anyone of any importance pays a weekly bribe to their local policeman and gets to know their local judge as a personal friend. This is the reason that poor Jurgis is sent to jail for attacking the packer who raped his wife and told that it was his own fault and not that of the packer. Yet this is not punishment for Jurgis, to whom jail is a haven with food and warmth, but for his family, who are left to try and support themselves while Jurgis is unable to work.

As Jurgis questions, "why could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze" (160)? Tamoszius, a friend of Jurgis's explains the situation perfectly clearly", [the company is] owned by a man who was trying to make as much money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army, were managers and superintendents and foremen, each one driving the man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as possible" (63). All in all, the working class of Chicago's Packingtown lives a life of struggle due to the greed of the packers and the criminals. This struggle, according to Sinclair, could be eased by the practice of socialism, rather than capitalism, but for the time being, corruption dismantles the ideal "American Dream.".