the jungle: motif

Upton Sinclair uses the motif of Jurgis to explain about the corruption of Chicago's factories in the early 1900s. Jurgis is an honest man in the beginning, believing in that hardwork pays off. He goes off to work in a terrible slaughterhouse, making hardly any money, but keeps his game face on. Gradually events unfold and he realizes how the system just wants to break him down.

Motif was used so heavily because without Jurgis' transformation, the book would have no point. Packingtown takes healthy, strong immigrants and forces them to work faster and harder under dreadful conditions and then not have any benefit. They lose their jobs or are broken down until they starve or have some catastrophic injury that prevents them from going to work. Upton Sinclair was exposing the harm that industry was causing Americans all for the sake of profit.