The Jungle analysis

Sinclair based the novel on the American meatpacking industry, an industry that had received scrutiny in the decade before the novel’s publication by journalists and social critics. For years before Sinclair began his work, these groups of writers and journalists had documented the abuses of the industry and the plight of immigrant workers who suffered under terrible working conditions. Sinclair’s novel succeeded where others failed, however, not only because it captured the facts of living conditions in the stockyards of Chicago, but also because it made these facts real in people’s imaginations.