Sinclair's purpose was avowedly political: He wasn't trying to write a novel of subtle psychological sophistication. Industrial Chicago was a man-made capitalist version of Dante's Inferno. The novel, even when it leaves Packingtown behind, is unrelentingly grim. Jurgis' wife, Ona, dies in childbirth, and then his son Antanas drowns in a puddle in the street. The immigrants die one after another, from work injuries or worse: one boy passes out in a remote corner of a factory and is eaten by rats. Illegal and unsanitary conditions in the packing plants are detailed, and disaster after disaster ensues. Socialist activist Sinclair used all the skills he had honed in writing popular pot-boiler novels to make Jurgis and his friends and family represent all the bad things that could happen to anyone in the factories, streets and saloons of Chicago. Things go rapidly downhill, as they are brutalized by the work and exploited by the corrupt economic system.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |