Pardon me: sometime lurker, first time poster.
I’m about two pages away from finishing Upton Sinclair’s **The Jungle** and I have felt moved enough about it that I want to talk about it in a space. This is such a space. When I started a little over a month ago, I had expected to lose interest in the rather wordy text and just push through it in order to get it over with. However, within the second chapter, I became hooked and was pulled through the drudgery and tragedies that engulfed Jurgis Rudkus and his family, amongst the more sympathetic characters in American literature.
In a rather odd way, **The Jungle** paralleled with some of the experiences I had undergone or had seen happened to loved ones amongst me. Breaking ones back in a strenuous job, living in less than ideal places, dealing with homelessness. But, overall, given how the story is going to end, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. For there is something to live in these trying times. We’ve often been told that if we work hard enough then good things would come. Apparently, at the time of the publication of **The Jungle**, there is no such thing.
I’m glad that I had bookmarked this for the end of the year of my reading. I’ve been enlightened and I’ll continue to be enlightened. But this was something I apparently needed. A wonderful, if not occasionally dispiriting, book.
by Own-Photograph-4642