Redbeard-Style (minus the vocab)

I'm currently in the middle of chapter 18.

From Chapter 11 -

There is no pet quite so fascinating as a baby.

While there may be a certain truth to this, it's an interesting perspective to think of your child as a "pet." And I certainly haven't been in their position so I'm in no place to criticize, but I've noticed that they take a drastically different attitude toward children than we tend to. Other than Jurgis with his son, there is nothing precious or special about them. They are either useful or just one more annoyance.

From Chapter 12 -

They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.

Too true. We may have our basic personalities, but our circumstances and situations constantly shape us. In addressing ills we need to insist on personal responsibility, but that is nothing if we do not also try to change the social/societal conditions that the actions emerged from. There needs to be a balance of both.

From Chapter 16 -

These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources--he could not say that it was the thing men have called "the system" that was crushing him to the earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had brought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat of justice. he only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.

Exactly.

From Chapter 17 -

They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to. All life had turned to rottenness and stench in them--love was a beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled here and there about the courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them. He was ignorant and they were wise; they had been everywhere and tried everything. They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

This could just as easily describe numerous places today as Chicago 100 years ago. Even in this country, much less the rest of the world, we do not start on a level playing field, and the results are all around us.

Next Article in the Series

Can you dig it?

Redbeard - Chapters 11-19

From Chapter 12 -

"They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything."

If all you did all day was lay around, you'd eventually come to the realization that you weren't accomplishing anything. And then you'd be really mad at your situation and the world that put you in that situation. I can totally understand what Sinclair's talking about here. The book just keeps getting more and more heartbreaking. You really want to see Jurgis and his family succeed, but it's like a slow-motion car crash. It's more terrible every second, and you can't look away.

From Chapter 13 -

albumen - any of a class of simple, sulfur-containing, water-soluble proteins that coagulate when heated, occurring in egg white, milk, blood, and other animal and vegetable tissues and secretions.

From Chapter 14 -

"For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage."

Ugh. We had brats for dinner tonight. I'm going to go throw up.

"Yet the soul of Ona was not dead – the souls of none of them were dead, but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open – old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It was a thing scarcely to be spoken – a thing never spoken by all the world, that will not know its own defeat."

"Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross. After that she learned to weep silently – their moods so seldom came together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves."

So depressing. I can't imagine wanting to live if I were in that situation.

When reading chapters 14-19, I didn't make any notations. I couldn't put the book down while I read those chapter, it was so compelling. I've got to stop here because if I go onto the next section, it might spoil some of the story for you.

Timely Article Series

I've had the thought before that if I was really to examine my beliefs and act on them I'd be a vegetarian, I just find myself a bit too lazy and lacking in conviction. I'm afraid my interest in this issue may end up being the same, but I'm intrigued by the movement to only eat locally produced food. In today's Kansas City Star is the first article in a four-part series about that movement. Wednesday is supposed to be "Community Supported Agriculture," Oct. 4 restaurants, and Oct. 11 supermarkets. I'll try to link them as they come out.

I think this movement addresses a lot of the evils we're reading about in The Jungle. There may be better regulations in place today to prevent the sale of rotten meat and the dangerous working conditions, but there are still problems with the industry since it's all about producing as much food as cheaply, quickly, and efficiently as possible. Growth hormones, pesticides, preservatives, and plenty of other chemical treatments go into the food we eat. Eating organic addresses this aspect of the business, but not the mass production aspect. Even organically produced food can depend upon cheap labor, unpleasant working conditions, and environmental practices that might be questionable. Eating locally eliminates the big factory settings like those in the book, the faceless anonymity of corporate capitalism. You know where your food is coming from and who is producing it, and those producers are directly accountable to their customers. Things are grown and eaten as they are naturally in season in a much more environmentally friendly way. It's not just about changing the way you eat, but changing the way the entire food industry functions.

The article goes into much more detail, so if you are curious I'd recommend giving it a read.

If you want to see just what it would be like to eat locally, the companion article, The 100-Mile Diet: What if KC tried Canada couple’s approach? gives an interesting consideration. In our area the only way to get fruits and vegetables in winter with this approach is to can, dry, freeze, or preserve them, for instance. Sometimes doing the right thing can require sacrifice.

And if we want a companion read for after we've finished The Jungle, maybe we should take a look at this (from the bottom of the first link):

If there’s a must-read book that defines the array of issues involved in local eating, it’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals ($26.95, Penguin Press).

How influential is the best seller? Nearly everyone who was interviewed for this story was reading it.

The book’s author, Michael Pollan, criticizes Whole Foods for promoting what he calls “big organic,” or the industrialization of organic food. Since the book’s release in April, Pollan and John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, have been engaging in a spirited blogfest at www.wholefoods.com and www.michael pollan.com.

By summer, Whole Foods had announced its “Go Local” campaign, a companywide initiative that includes farmers markets in store parking lots, $100 gift certificates for consumers who share local sources with stores and $10 million to make loans to small-scale farmers.

Eager to apply the initiative, Rebecca Miller, marketing director for Whole Foods in Overland Park, was among the first to recommend picking up a copy of the book.

“We’re a very fine store, and we’re a very fine company worldwide,” she said, “but you go into our stores and we don’t have a lot of local food.”

Happy birthday, dear Upton...

Hello, Jungle readers. It's a pleasure to join your group. I just started the book, and it's not quite what I was expecting... the descriptions in the text are so dense that I find myself having to read more slowly than I read most fiction. It almost requires the reading labor of poetry. It's a good thing I'm into poetry...maybe I'll get through the rest of Chapter 1 this week. :)

I also wanted to let you all know that today is Upton Sinclair's birthday. I get a daily email from Bloomsbury Press, and this is what they had to say today:

On this day in literary history from http://www.bloomsbury.com

Upton Sinclair born 1878 in Baltimore

Upton Sinclair was one of the most popular novelists in America in the early decades of the twentieth-century, although his name appears to be increasingly absent from anthologies of the period. Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Dragon’s Teeth, Sinclair was a social-realist who used his novels to dissect the many problems plaguing the America of his day. In The Jungle, he creates the character of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America with great hopes of making his fortune as he searches for the fulfilment of the American dream. However, his dreams are quickly trodden under foot when he becomes a meatpacker in the filthy Chicago stockyards, the ‘jungle’ of the title. In his scathing social commentary, Sinclair exposes the life of the common man, the conditions in which he was forced to work, and the meagre slave wages he had no choice but to accept.

Inching Along

All I've added to my schedule is one class; it doesn't seem like I should be that much busier. I'm in class every Tuesday night 6-10 and have a bit of homework. Yet it seems since I started I haven't been reading anything. I haven't even touched the pile of kids books on my desk and only seem to get to this book during lunch. I just finished chapter 7 today. Not real impressive. Anyway, a few measly thoughts;

Globalization

People said that old man Durham himself was responsible for these immigrations; he had sworn that he would fix the people of Packingtown so that they would never again call a strike on him, and so he had sent his agents into every city and village in Europe to spread the tale of the chances of work and high wages at the stockyards. The people had come in hordes; and old Durham had squeezed them tighter and tighter, speeding them up and grinding them to pieces, and sending for new ones. (from chapter 6)

A rather ingenious plan, really, if you only view other people as objects to consume and discard. And that, to me is the big problem with unadulterated capitalism, it leads to a consumption mentality that becomes all-consuming. Everything and everyone else is there for you to use if you can just be clever, strong, advantaged, and lucky enough to find a way how.

For Hadrian

He had learned the ways of things about him now. It was a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you. You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with. The storekeepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country--from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie. (from chapter 7)

While continuing the theme of the first quote, when I read it today this also made me think of Hadrian and his recent posts; it seemed in keeping with his viewpoint of late. There are a lot of things to love about this country, but it does seem to be a double-edged sword with equally detestable qualities.

Redbeard's Take - Chapters 3-10

I'll go over my notes from a few more chapters tonight. I was talking about the book this weekend to Yuki's brother, who is very well-read. He liked it, too.

From Chapter 3:

"And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self- confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it."

This passage really makes me sad. It's just like real life. For most people, life doesn't turn out how they expect. When you're new and fresh, you're so optimistic, but that point when you find out that you're just drudging through your life, that life isn't fair, that's the tipping point.


From Chapter 5:

"And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he. So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar. And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty."

What a terrible way to live. This is how I imagine someone who works on commission lives.

From Chapter 7:

"She was too good for him, he told himself, and he was afraid, because she was his."

"He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she would be lost; he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her from the world."

That's how I feel about relationships. I don't want to get sappy, but it's scary having someone else depend on you. Wonderful, but scary.

From Chapter 9:

"When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote – and there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused for the rest of the day."

So, he's getting his naturalization papers because he gets 1/2 day off work? It's like wanting to do jury duty because you get paid time off. But under the conditions he worked in, you didn't have vacation time or floating holidays.
..."and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes."

That was true 100 years ago, and hasn't changed much since. Even with those 'sweeping McCain/Feingold campaign finance reforms'.

I started the book this afternoon. And while I'm not very far into it. I did want to blog a little bit.

I can't speak about the dark undertones. However, the beginning is a bit light with the description of the wedding. While reading about the celebration, it reminded me of the Greek festival I went to last night. Here's some text:

A charming informality was one of the characteristics of this celebration. The men wore their hats, or, if they wished, they took them off, and their coats with them; they ate when and where they pleased, and moved as often as they pleased. There were to be speeches and singing, but no one had to listen who did not care to; if he wished, meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was perfectly free. (p. 9)


The festivities last night were much the same. Formalities were secondary to enjoyment. The dancing and music was entertaining.

When planning my own wedding, I wanted to create this kind of atmosphere for my own guests. I hope I achieved it.

Light through the canopy

Well, I'm nearly done with the book. About 40 pages left. I talked to Mr. Longfellow today about a tentative end date. Maybe mid-to-late October? How's that work with everyone? And is everyone liking the book? General thoughts? Feel free to post or comment on the blog as you have time.

In the past, we've done some sort of after-book meetup. How does everyone feel about a [vegetarian] meeting to discuss?

Makes One Want to Be a Vegetarian

I anticipate it will get worse, but chapter 3 is not the best reading during lunch.

Redbeard's Take - Chapters 1 and 2

I've been zipping through my copy of the Jungle, and haven't posted about it yet. So this one might be a little long. I'm about 2/3 of the way through. My take so far, in general. I love the book. It's completely compelling. It's like watching an accident in slow motion. You can't look away. It's so heartbreaking. I hope I'm not spoiling the book for anyone, but really, if you're going to read it for the book group, you should already know most of this by now. I can't imagine how they're going to pile more sadness and tragedy on the hardworking Jurgis. And I've got another 1/3 yet to read.

From Chapter 1 -

"She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white."

First, I thought this line was interesting because, from what I know of weddings, a white dress denotes virginity. This book was written just about 100 years ago and there were still the same thoughts about white wedding dresses as there are today. Next, is the dress conspicuous because it was a rarity to have white (pure) wedding dresses back then, or is the girl, Ona, conspicuous because she's wearing it? Does the narrator know something about Ona that we don't, or is this some sort of hint at the future?

"...and if any of these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked sufficiently hungry, a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the feast."

That's just how it was in the old days, I guess. People were more inviting and accepting. Try that now, walking past a park shelter or a picnic and seeing if anyone offered you food or even an ice water. Not likely.

Viands. An item of food, a very choice or delicious dish.

Badinage. Light, playful banter.

"Some do not dance at all, but simply hold each other's hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express itself with their feet. Among these are Jokubus Szedvilas and his wife, Lucija, who together keep the delicatessen store, and consume nearly as much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the middle of the lfoor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking slowly from side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of toothless and perspiring ecstasy."

I love that passage. Very visual and heartwarming.

Shirtwaists. A woman's blouse or bodice styled like a tailored shirt.

"It is very imprudent, it is tragic – but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling with all the power of their souls – they cannot give up the veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days."

This passage could really be the summary for the book. Well, for the first half, anyway.

From Chapter 2 -

"He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten."

Jurgis is so young and strong, so full of optimism. That's how I feel at work most of the time, but there's this looming specter of the worn out, grumpy, continually pessimistic attitude. How long can it be held at bay?

"In that country [America], rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials - he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man."

America really is (or was) the best country in the world. We still count each other as good as any other man, but how many other men count others as good as themselves? Not many.

"It made them quite sick to pay the money the railroad people asked them for food."

That's true. Railroad food is expensive, and not that good. I guess that comes with being a captive audience.

"It was a standing jest of the boarders that Aniele cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in the rooms. Undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin, but it seemed probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old lady regarded it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms."

*shudder*

"This, too, seemed to the newcomers an economical arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and their heads were not full of troublesome thoughts about 'germs.'"

There's something to be said for the news. At least we're better informed about public health. Is it better to know what's killing you or just be blissfully unaware?