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'The Jungle' Quotes

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The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Bedford
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is full of graphic descriptions of the meat-packing industry. The lines were so moving and troubling that the novel inspired the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Here are quotes from The Jungle.
  • "It is an elemental odor, raw and crude; it is rich, almost rancid, sensual and strong."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 2

  • "It is a sound, a sound made up of ten thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first-it sunk into your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 2

  • "The line of the buildings stood clear-cut and black against the sky; here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys, with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 2

  • "They use everything about the hog except the squeal."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 3

  • "Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it--it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 3

  • "So from the top to bottom the place is simply a seething cauldron of jealousies and hatreds; there is no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there is no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 5

  • "And, for this, at the end of the week, he will carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour-just about his proper share of the million and three quarters of children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 6

  • "He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago-after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 8

  • "Here is a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances, immorality is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 10

  • "It was piece-work, and she was apt to have a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 13

  • "This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat will be shoveled into carts and the man who did the shoveling will not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 14

  • "They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because that it had to do with wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child group up to be strong. And now it was all gone-it would never be!"
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 14

  • "To Jurgis this man's whole presence reeked of the crime he had committed; the touch of his body was madness to him-it set every nerve of him a-tremble, it aroused all the demon in his soul."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 15

  • "They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink-why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside-why could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 16

  • "He has no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources-he could not say that it is the thing men have called "the system" that is crushing him to the earth; that it is the packers, his masters, who has dealt their brutal will to him from the seat of justice."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 16

  • "Jurgis could see all the truth now-could see himself through the whole long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 18

  • "The word rang through him like the sound of a bell, echoing in the far depths of him, making forgotten chords to vibrate, old shadowy fears to stir-fears of the dark, fears of the void, fears of annihilation. She was dead! She was dead!"
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 19

  • "Elzbieta is one of the primitive creatures like the angleworm, which goes on living though cut in half; like a hen, which deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the last that is left her."
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 20

  • "Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for three long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound!"
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 22

  • "Ah what agony is that, what despair, when the tomb of memory is rent open and the ghosts of his old life comes forth to scourge him!"
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 22

  • "They are trying to save their souls-and who but a fool could fail to see that all that is the matter with their souls is that they has not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?"
    - The Jungle, The Jungle, Ch. 23

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