Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
The novel establishes its motif of bad weather early, beginning with this dreadful winter in Chicago. The author uses a metaphor of trees being blown and felled by the winter weather. This refers to the winter’s effects on the weakened, impoverished people of Packingtown. The winter’s “raging blasts” rip “weaker branches” from their places and toss them to the ground. In the same way, the winter in Chicago kills off the people that the grueling work and horrible conditions have sickened and harmed. The motif is linked to the theme of the futility of the immigrant population’s struggle against poverty and oppression. It represents their battle against the forces of capitalism that are beyond their control and that persist regardless of their efforts. Like branches in the wind, they are powerless to resist.
The bad weather motif extends beyond physical discomfort. It permeates the characters' lives, infiltrating their homes and worsening their struggles. For example, Jurgis's house is not a refuge from the season:
Home was not a very attractive place—at least not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest weather.
Even Ona and Jurgis’s home is “not a very attractive place” during the bitter winter months. They can’t afford to warm it properly, and so it’s only a partial shelter against their dangerous surroundings.
It’s not just the cold that endangers Sinclair’s characters, however. The summer is just as dangerous and unpleasant as the winter; the narrator tells the reader that “each season had its trials.” In Chapter 10, they explain that in the midsummer sun, the stockyards become "a very purgatory." The cloying heat breeds bacteria and disease in the unventilated rooms, pools of cattle's blood, and badly-constructed streets:
Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them.
The stench of rotting flesh combined with the "plague" of insects that descend on the stockyards is a hellish vision. Here, Sinclair makes one of many biblical allusions in the books to emphasize the horror of the flies. They are a “veritable Egyptian plague,” a reference to the Plagues of Egypt from the Bible. The flies are a "plague" that punish everyone in an area for the sins of the privileged few. Sinclair draws a parallel between this situation—where workers are exploited in awful circumstances—and one from the Old Testament, when the "plagues" Moses unleashed on the world punished the Pharaoh for enslaving the Israelites.
When describing the horrific conditions in some parts of the meat-packing trade, the narrator makes allusions to the works of the authors Dante Alighieri and Émile Zola. These, along with the visceral tactile imagery of the passage, provide context for the horrifying scenes at the stockyards:
[...] to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on 'whisky-malt,' the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called 'steerly'—which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face.
The narrator alludes to the hellish scenes depicted in Dante’s Inferno, as well as to the writings of Zola. Both of these authors famously wrote about journeys through hell. In referring to them in this way, Sinclair is drawing to mind the roiling, awful scenes of sinners in eternal damnation for his reader. The allusion illustrates the brutal, bloody horrors and scale of the stockyards. It also adds a timeless, eternal quality to the scene for the audience and emphasizes the gruesome nature and inescapability of the environment.
Additionally, Sinclair employs tactile imagery to portray the repulsive and diseased conditions of some of the cattle. Although there are no situations in the stockyards that would usually be considered pleasant, some of the cattle-processing work is worse than the rest. Sinclair depicts the horrible physical state of “steerly” cattle with vivid depictions of boils bursting and foul-smelling fluids splashing. The reader feels the sticky, unclean sensation of this “nasty job” as the narrator describes the “plunging” of the knives and the “foul-smelling” liquids they emit.
The Jungle was one of the first novels to describe the repugnant conditions and gruesome tasks faced by the workers in Chicago’s processing plants. In these harrowing moments, the reader's understanding of the immense challenges and dangers of stockyard work becomes nauseatingly realistic.
Bad weather appears as a recurring motif in the novel, emphasizing the inescapable struggles faced by the poor in early-1900s America. Incredibly harsh and unpleasant seasonal changes appear throughout the book, consistently presenting challenges and adversities to Jurgis and his family. For example, in the first third of the novel, the narrator says that:
Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.
The novel establishes its motif of bad weather early, beginning with this dreadful winter in Chicago. The author uses a metaphor of trees being blown and felled by the winter weather. This refers to the winter’s effects on the weakened, impoverished people of Packingtown. The winter’s “raging blasts” rip “weaker branches” from their places and toss them to the ground. In the same way, the winter in Chicago kills off the people that the grueling work and horrible conditions have sickened and harmed. The motif is linked to the theme of the futility of the immigrant population’s struggle against poverty and oppression. It represents their battle against the forces of capitalism that are beyond their control and that persist regardless of their efforts. Like branches in the wind, they are powerless to resist.
The bad weather motif extends beyond physical discomfort. It permeates the characters' lives, infiltrating their homes and worsening their struggles. For example, Jurgis's house is not a refuge from the season:
Home was not a very attractive place—at least not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest weather.
Even Ona and Jurgis’s home is “not a very attractive place” during the bitter winter months. They can’t afford to warm it properly, and so it’s only a partial shelter against their dangerous surroundings.
It’s not just the cold that endangers Sinclair’s characters, however. The summer is just as dangerous and unpleasant as the winter; the narrator tells the reader that “each season had its trials.” In Chapter 10, they explain that in the midsummer sun, the stockyards become "a very purgatory." The cloying heat breeds bacteria and disease in the unventilated rooms, pools of cattle's blood, and badly-constructed streets:
Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them.
The stench of rotting flesh combined with the "plague" of insects that descend on the stockyards is a hellish vision. Here, Sinclair makes one of many biblical allusions in the books to emphasize the horror of the flies. They are a “veritable Egyptian plague,” a reference to the Plagues of Egypt from the Bible. The flies are a "plague" that punish everyone in an area for the sins of the privileged few. Sinclair draws a parallel between this situation—where workers are exploited in awful circumstances—and one from the Old Testament, when the "plagues" Moses unleashed on the world punished the Pharaoh for enslaving the Israelites.
When describing Jurgis's miserable state in jail, the author employs verbal irony and an allusion to “The Ballad of Reading Gaol." This was a poem written by the British author Oscar Wilde, who was also unjustly imprisoned. The narrator ends the chapter with this enigmatic statement:
So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice—
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong.
And they do well to hide their hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon.
The allusion Sinclair makes here draws a parallel between Jurgis and Wilde. Wilde was imprisoned in England in the late 19th century because he was gay (homosexuality was criminalized by the bigoted government at the time). Wilde wrote and published this poem after his own imprisonment as a kind of social protest. He and Jurgis were both victims of unjust legal practices, and both "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and The Jungle contain messages of social reform.
By invoking the poem, the author emphasizes the harsh reality of Jurgis's situation, the unfairness of the ruling that convicted him, and the inhumane conditions of the prison in which he's incarcerated. What's more, by suggesting that the world "deals its justice," the narrator uses verbal irony to underscore the unjust nature of a system that allows such hardships and suffering to persist. In moments like this, the reader is prompted to reflect on the flawed nature of early-20th-century criminal justice.
In this passage, the author employs an allusion to Noah's Ark that also serves as a metaphor, depicting the horrific conditions and diverse population of the Chicago jail where Jurgis is imprisoned:
This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime—there were murderers, 'hold-up men' and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, 'shoplifters,' 'confidence men,' petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to.
Describing the jail, Sinclair makes an allusion to "Noah’s ark," a ship that appears in the Bible, built large enough to contain two of every animal in the world. The allusion to the biblical story of Noah's ark serves a dual purpose. It highlights the range of inmates, as the jail contains people who come from various backgrounds and have committed—or are innocent of—a huge array of crimes. Moreover, the way this passage uses the "ark" as a metaphor implies that the jail provides a form of temporary "salvation." Although it's hardly a pleasant place to live, compared to the dangerous streets of wintry Chicago, it's a haven. The OId Testament of the Bible says that Noah’s Ark was built to save the Earth’s animals from being destroyed by a flood that drowned the world. Although the prisoners are trapped in this "ark," they are simultaneously “saved” from potentially dying on the streets in the freezing cold.
Sinclair alludes to the stirring French national anthem, the "Marseillaise," after the speaker finishes at the socialist rally. Already excited and shaken by the speech, Jurgis's state of depression is further disrupted by an unfamiliar melody:
Jurgis had never heard it, and he could not make out the words, but the wild and wonderful spirit of it seized upon him—it was the 'Marseillaise!' As stanza after stanza of it thundered forth, he sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve. He had never been so stirred in his life—it was a miracle that had been wrought in him. He could not think at all, he was stunned; yet he knew that in the mighty upheaval that had taken place in his soul, a new man had been born.
The reference to the "Marseillaise" evokes a sense of fervor and revolutionary spirit. The French national anthem tells the story of a country's people rising against tyranny. The lyrics invoke scenes of righteous violence in order to achieve liberty, equality and fraternity. It's a fundamentally different kind of violence than the unfeeling, bland horror of the slaughterhouses. Jurgis recognizes the anthem, despite never having heard it before. He doesn't need to be told what it means to feel the sense of comradeship the song is intended to evoke.
In combination with the speaker’s captivating presence, hearing this music begins a transformative experience within Jurgis. Despite his lack of familiarity with the specific words, the anthem's symbolic power resonates deeply with him. It initiates a rebirth of his convictions and gives him a sense of unity with the larger socialist movement. This allusion serves to reinforce the message of socialist upheaval and revolution that begins in this later section of the novel.
Dr. Schliemann alludes to the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Peter Kropotkin as he speaks at the Socialist gathering held at Young Fisher's house. When the Doctor is asked to defend his ideas on automation, he replies that his questioner should:
[...] consider that in each of my little free communities, there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes [...] and do it at a saving of all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops, and read about the new science of agriculture, which has been built up in the last ten years [...]
This passage is part of a debate between Dr. Schliemann and the socialist "preacher," Lucas. Although the two men share many political goals, they differ significantly on key topics like religion. This serves to showcase the range of perspectives that can exist within socialist ideas. In this scene, the author is able to give details on many key socialist issues to the reader as they are "explained" to the assembled company by Schliemann.
The narrative refers to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Peter Kropotkin—prominent socialist writers and speakers of the period—to illustrate how erudite and well-educated Schliemann is. This positions him as intellectually superior to Jurgis, who is also slated to speak at the gathering. Dr. Schliemann denounces religion and envisions a future where labor is reduced or eliminated through technological advancements. He believes that it will save workers the “drudgery” of inane tasks and preserve “nine-tenths” of their time for other things. This is an idealistic and simplified version of some Socialist visions of the future of automation. The imaginary "communities" Schliemann describes are conceptual, places in which society would be freed from the "drudgery" of mundane tasks and wage labor through cooperative effort and scientific advancements.
