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The Jungle Plot Overview Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, a young man and woman who have recently immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their wedding feast at a bar in an area of Chicago known as Packingtown. The couple and several relatives have come to Chicago in search of a better life, but Packingtown, the center of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is difficult to find a job. Jurgis, who has great faith in the American Dream, vows that he will simply work harder to make more money. Jurgis, who is young and energetic, quickly finds work. The family signs an agreement to buy a house, but it turns out to be a swindle; the agreement is full of hidden costs, and the house is shoddy and poorly maintained. As the family’s living expenses increase, even Ona and young Stanislovas, one of Teta Elzbieta’s children, are forced to look for jobs. Jobs in Packingtown involve back-breaking labor, however, conducted in unsafe conditions with little regard for individual workers. Furthermore, the immigrant community is fraught with crime and corruption. Jurgis’s father, Dede Antanas, finds a job only after agreeing to pay another man a third of his wages for helping him obtain the job. But the job is too difficult for the old man, and it quickly kills him. Winter is the most dangerous season in Packingtown and even Jurgis, forced to work in an unheated slaughterhouse in which it is difficult to see, risks his life every day by simply going to work. Marija is courted by Tamoszius, a likable violinist, but the couple is never able to marry because they never have enough money to hold a wedding. Marija’s factory closes down and she loses her job. Distressed about the terrible conditions of his family members’ lives, Jurgis joins a union and slowly begins to understand the web of political corruption and bribery that makes Packingtown run. Hoping to improve his lot, Jurgis begins trying to learn English. Marija regains her job, but she is fired when she complains about being cheated out of some of her pay. Ona is now pregnant, and her job has become increasingly difficult for her. In Packingtown, any mishap can bring ruin upon a family. Jurgis sprains his ankle and is forced to spend nearly three months in bed, unable to work. Even though poor working conditions caused the accident, the factory simply cuts off Jurgis’s pay while he recuperates. Jurgis at last recovers and returns to work, but the factory refuses to give him his job back. After a long, frustrating search for employment, Jurgis is forced to take a job at the fertilizer plant, the foulest place in all of Packingtown. ****Ultimately, it would be Sinclair’s political convictions that would lead to his first literary success and the one for which he is most known. The contempt he had developed for the upper class as a youth had led Sinclair to socialism in 1903, and in 1904 he was sent to Chicago by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write an exposé on the mistreatment of workers in the meatpacking industry. After spending several weeks conducting undercover research on his subject matter, Sinclair threw himself into the manuscript that would become The Jungle. Initially rejected by publishers, in 1906 the novel was finally released by Doubleday to great public acclaim—and shock. Despite Sinclair’s intention to reveal the plight of laborers at the meatpacking plants, his vivid descriptions of the cruelty to animals and unsanitary conditions there caused great public outcry and ultimately changed the way people shopped for food. Fast Food Nation Plot Overview Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, is a thought-provoking, research-based account of the rise of the fast food industry and the resulting consequences of the drive for low-cost, rapidly prepared meals. Schlosser clearly demonstrates that this industry alone has been responsible for a revolution in the ways by which beef and poultry are grown, fattened, slaughtered, processed and packaged. Corporate greed and profit-driven executives have been responsible for the destruction of the meat cutters and packers union, the demise of the large urban meat-packers who employed those union workers, the destruction of formerly lovely western towns by the placement of huge feedlots and slaughterhouses with waste lagoons that pollute the air, the wholesale exploitation of poor, uneducated, non-English speaking workers, and the demise of the independent rancher who cannot compete with corporate-controlled ranches and feedlots and who is the victim of secret pricing by the four top meat processors. Further, these corporate giants, through sheer political power and lobbying, have been able to systematically dismantle any attempts to effectively police the meat processing industry, leaving the consumer vulnerable to a host of infectious diseases rampant in slaughterhouses across the country and the workers without proper health care and workmen's compensation. The fast food industry itself is no stranger to greed and profit margins. With no concern for society's health, it advertises to the nation's young, using marketing techniques devised by psychological consultants and kids' focus groups. It fills consumers' stomachs with high fat, low-nutrition foods and sodas that sport 8-10 teaspoons of sugar each. It employs teenagers and uneducated adults with a minimum of training in proper food handling and cleanliness. It is responsible for the current epidemic of obesity in this country and the growing obesity in countries around the world that have embraced fast food as an American cultural ideal. Further, its lack of care for the appropriate handling of food, particularly meat, has resulted in a series of outbreaks of pathogen-caused illnesses and death. To Schlosser, this industry is simply one example of large corporations run amuck, that is, setting themselves above the "rules" of responsible business practices and "buying" the political power to do so. He blames a series of Republican administrations for the wholesale indifference to the welfare of society in favor of campaign funding and for the perpetuation of a clearly right-wing belief that government should continue a "hands-off" policy toward business, sacrificing the health and safety of the public along with it. ASSIGNMENT: As you start to grapple with both texts, write down a list of how The Jungle and Fast Food Nation are similar, and how they are different. (This will lead to a larger project we will be doing in groups, so make sure you write down your ideas! You will need them!) .

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