The Jungle Presentation
Transcript: THE END Thanks for watching! :D By: Nina, Kaitlyn, Erika Jurgis, who just planned to marry his lover, Ona, moves to America with her family, hoping to achieve the American Dream. Corruption and cruelty end up breaking them and their life apart, with the capitalism taking over the work places and treating the workers badly, Jurgis is trying to help the family. Through the pain and sorrow and the fear of losing jobs because of sickness or injury, he and Ona have a child, named Antanas. Jurgis gets thrown in jail for fighting a boss, because he raped Ona. He comes out of jail and finds Ona on her death bed. She dies. Jurgis gets a new job but gets injured and must stay home, with his only joy in life being his child. Then tragedy strikes and the baby dies. He leaves the family and starts "hoboing it". He ends up getting thrown in jail again and meets an old jail friend. He and the friend starting theifing and in the process Jurgis ends up at a socialist meeting. Jurgis' world changes as he starts becoming more and more involved with the socialist movement and he is finally happy again. "So America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed. If one could only manage to get the price of passage, he could count his troubles at an end." (Sinclair 26) Show how naive he is for believing this because he doesn't know how horrible the world can be in America, he was just going by rumors. The author uses tone to show the negative to positive transition of the novel as Jurgis goes from capitalism to socialism. Marija Berczynskas: She is Ona's cousin and she travels with the family in hope to achieve the American Dream as well. She is also a very strong character that helps support the family, even going to the extent of pushing her own wants and needs aside. She is also stuborn, refering to how she would fight capitalism, but that was slowly beaten out of her. "Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the throttle, and the neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicing." (Sincliar 98) Ona Rudkus: Jurgis' wife. She begins with hope for a new life in America with her husband and family but she is gradualy beaten down by her work. Shows the effect capatilism has on her. "...and so she was always chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue." (Sinclair 124) "...in the realm of thought, his life was a perpetual adventure. There was so much to know-so many wonders to be discovered!" (Sinclair 378). Because Jurgis found socialism he became hapier, and more importantly he found hope again. The tone of the story now is completely hopeful. Comparing this to the last quote gives a great contrast in the novel that Sinclair purposefully made. He wanted to point out how negative and horrible it is to be part of capitalism and then how great it is to be part of socialism. The Jungle The general thought throughout this book was to achieve the American Dream. Socialism is the remedy for the negative effects of capitalism. "Jurgis had been wandering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness, and here, suddenly a hand reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set and set him upon a mountain top." (Sinclair 360) Upton Sinclair Teta Elzbieta: She is Ona's stepmother and the one who tries to care for the family the most however she can. After Jurgis leaves she is left with the family and their problems. This shows how strong she is, which is why Sinclair wrote her that way, so he could portray the value of family. "Her soul had been baked hard in the fire of adversity, and there was no altering it now; life to her was the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only as they bore upon that." (Sinclair 362) Jurgis Rudkus: Main character of the story. Husband of Ona and father of Antanas. Main worker for the family. "Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money- I will work harder." (Sinclair 23) He is the person in the story that Sinclair meant to show how capitalism ruined his life. "Dead! dead! And she was only a girl, she was barely eighteen! Her life had hardly begun- and here she lay murdered-mangled, tortured to death!" (Sinclair 217). This negative tone portrays how sad and angry and disbelieving Jurgis is at his final great dispare. It also helps lead to him leaving the family because he is done with having to deal with capitalism. "To Jurgis the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. 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." (Sinclair 360) This helps show that the dream turned out to be unatainable for the family.