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If one is interested in reading books that changed the United States, this is the one for you. The book focuses on a newly-immigrated family and their struggles in the Chicago stockyards. I will admit that this book takes a turn for the depressing; the strong family slowly deteriorates into an unrecognizable group. The saddest thing about this book is not the content, but the effect that it had on the American reader. Yes, it inspired change- but not the kind that Sinclair had aimed for. The public grasped on to the unsanitary ways of the meat packing industry rather than the horrid social aspects of the book. I for one think that this had something to do with the books ending; perhaps it was a tad bit too foreign of a solution laid out by Sinclair. If anyone has read this book, please tell me your thoughts, especially on the ending.

I can clearly remember the profoundly shocking effect this book had on me which was only exacerbated by the knowledge that what I had read, though fiction, had actually taken place in real life. A very disturbing book but one which you cannot look away from.

The ending reminded me a lot of the ending of The Grapes Of Wrath - no immediate solution in sight. At least in Steinbeck's book there was some hint of hope but The Jungle ends in a wasteland of abject misery and horror.