——————————————————————————–I’ve been reading The Jungle for my U.S. Lit class. The Jungle is the story of a poor Lituanian family that comes to America and gos to work in Packingtown, the meat packing section of Chicago. It is a very interesting story about the corruption of the American dream and the injustice that plagues this contries economic system.Here I will put some of my favorite quotes and ideas for the book. Right now they are just raw quotes from the book but eventualy I’ll put up explanation’s, ect…——————————————————————————–”And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot-the law was against them, the whole machiniry of society was at their oppressor’s command! If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them, back he would go into that wild-beast pen [jail] from which he had just escaped!” (p178)——————————————————————————–America (198):”If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.”——————————————————————————–Greed (p297): and incredable quote”I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health, and good repute-and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit!”——————————————————————————–”The inevitablity of the revolution depended upon this fact, that they had no choice but to unite or be exterminated;”——————————————————————————–”He had lost the fierce battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; all society was busied to see that he did not escape his sentence.”——————————————————————————–
“Marriage and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man’s explotation of the sex pleasure. The difference between them was a difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own terms: equality, a life contract and the legitimacy-that is, the property rights-of her children. If she had no money, she was a peoletarian, and sold herself for an existence.”——————————————————————————–The good life:”He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old wanderlust had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. There were mishaps and discomforts-but at least there was always something new; and only think what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place, seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories, to be suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes, new places, and new people every hour! To a man whose life had consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day-and to be now his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a new adventure every hour!”——————————————————————————–Talking about men in a jail (p165):”They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in which justice and honor, women’s bodies and men’s souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit, in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in it’s own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.”——————————————————————————–
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