A Low Opinion of Humanity
If you read my thoughts about Moby-Dick, you know I generally like my first experience with a book or movie to be as uninformed as possible. Once you start learning about the author, historical context, literary criticism, and such, start analyzing for meanings that come from beyond the text, you can never again have that one-on-one interaction with the text without outside influences on your experience. I'll go back after I'm done, learn more, and re-experience it with new eyes later, but I try not to spoil my opportunity to enjoy that first, untainted encounter (although if that were truly the case I wouldn't be participating in a discussion group and experiencing these books in a social context). That didn't happen in the case of this book, so if you don't want me to ruin it for you stop reading this post now (or at least skip ahead to the last paragraph).
I didn't so much make a choice as have it made for me. The edition I found on our shelf has a plain, white cover with the title and author in large print, and then the bookjacket blurb starts right there on the bottom of the cover:
Since it's gotten me thinking, I'll share what I've learned. When he wrote this, Sinclair was an idealistic socialist. He had struggled through poverty growing up and felt Capitalism was a corrupt and bankrupt system that only led to misery for the vast majority of people. His goal was to write something that would expose and overthrow that system, would lead to a Socialist revolution. This book was first published as a serial in a Socialist publication, in fact. He chose the meatpacking industry in Chicago as his target because it was such an obvious example of everything he saw wrong with Capitalism. And he wasn't the only one who thought so. The book caused a huge sensation, Sinclair was invited to visit the President, and before long Congress began passing the first laws to regulate the meat, food, and drug industries. It did a lot to make things better for the people Sinclair wrote about. But ultimately this was a disappointment for him; he saw the meatpacking industry as a symptom of the problem he hoped to address. People reacted by attacking the symptom, but missed the greater message and left alone the root problem, the Capitalist system itself.
In my previous post I made reference to my "socialist leanings." Let me give the disclaimer that I'm not a Political Science or History student; I can't say anything about the actual application of Socialism in the real world and whether it really "works" or not when put into action. The theory makes sense to me, though, that we all contribute to the greater good and the government is there to make sure it happens. Proponents of Capitalism believe that forcing people to do anything won't work, but that people will take care of each other if freely allowed to. I'm afraid I have too low an opinion of humanity to buy into that. If left to their own devices, the majority of people will pursue their own interests the majority of the time. They might look after family, neighbors, and "their own," but plenty of others will be left with no one to help them. I think the only way to insure that everyone is taken care of is to mandate it.
I didn't so much make a choice as have it made for me. The edition I found on our shelf has a plain, white cover with the title and author in large print, and then the bookjacket blurb starts right there on the bottom of the cover:
The Jungle was designed as a weapon. The author hoped it would serve The Revolution--which seemed to him in 1906 to be marching just around the corner. He did not intend it to be a work of art . . .That grabbed my attention enough that I kept reading. After that I wanted to compare and read the jacket blurb on the graphic novel. By that point I had enough information that I figured it wouldn't do any further harm to read the full graphic novel to get exposure to the story; plus, I was intrigued. At lunch today I read the introduction in this edition, written by the author with the benefit of hindsight in 1946. It's all very interesting.
Since it's gotten me thinking, I'll share what I've learned. When he wrote this, Sinclair was an idealistic socialist. He had struggled through poverty growing up and felt Capitalism was a corrupt and bankrupt system that only led to misery for the vast majority of people. His goal was to write something that would expose and overthrow that system, would lead to a Socialist revolution. This book was first published as a serial in a Socialist publication, in fact. He chose the meatpacking industry in Chicago as his target because it was such an obvious example of everything he saw wrong with Capitalism. And he wasn't the only one who thought so. The book caused a huge sensation, Sinclair was invited to visit the President, and before long Congress began passing the first laws to regulate the meat, food, and drug industries. It did a lot to make things better for the people Sinclair wrote about. But ultimately this was a disappointment for him; he saw the meatpacking industry as a symptom of the problem he hoped to address. People reacted by attacking the symptom, but missed the greater message and left alone the root problem, the Capitalist system itself.
In my previous post I made reference to my "socialist leanings." Let me give the disclaimer that I'm not a Political Science or History student; I can't say anything about the actual application of Socialism in the real world and whether it really "works" or not when put into action. The theory makes sense to me, though, that we all contribute to the greater good and the government is there to make sure it happens. Proponents of Capitalism believe that forcing people to do anything won't work, but that people will take care of each other if freely allowed to. I'm afraid I have too low an opinion of humanity to buy into that. If left to their own devices, the majority of people will pursue their own interests the majority of the time. They might look after family, neighbors, and "their own," but plenty of others will be left with no one to help them. I think the only way to insure that everyone is taken care of is to mandate it.
posted by Degolar at 5:16 PM
2 Comments:
the introduction to the "original, uncut" edition was indeed written by a former professor of mine. she confirms your explanation, Chris, of Sinclair's purpose in writing the novel. she said this about the uncut version:
"Yep, that's me. It's the edition put out by See Sharp Press: "The Uncensored Original Edition." It's not the "more gore" that makes it interesting, but the more truth-telling about the rich, the police, the meatpacking plant owners. Also, the socialist vision is much stronger here--more on children dying and what women were reduced to doing--how money drove everything. In fact, the term "the jungle" is in this version and not in the one that became famous--all that had to be cut out in order to get published. So, you might want to read this version, which is the one that was found in Girard--where Sinclair published the novel first, as serialized by the Appeal to Reason and (in one of its subsidiary publications)."
Wow! Brian, that's cool that she was your teacher. What a small world.
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