Question

What do you think was Sinclair’s purpose in writing about Jurgis’s life?

Do you think he was trying to cause a change in the American workplace?

Describe your answer in at least three sentences.

Answer 1

At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight accident – simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle. There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain . . . When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his shoe . . . it chanced to be a rush day at Durham's, and all the long morning he limped about with his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great that it made him faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he was fairly beaten, and had to tell the boss. They sent for the company doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by his folly. The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned.
It was dreadful that an accident of this sort . . . should have meant such suffering . . . It was of no use for them to try to deceive him; he knew as much about the situation as [his family] did, and he knew that the family might literally starve to death.
– Excerpt from Chapter 11 of The Jungle