"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair

During and after reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, I couldn’t help thinking of alternate titles that I invented for the novel. One is The Struggle or simply Struggle. How about The Grindstone? Maybe Despair Under the Elms, but that would mix and stretch references a little much. Perhaps Despair. Another title could be Against All Odds. Or maybe No Matter How Hard You Try. Then there are the obvious titles like Capitalism Versus Socialism, The Capitalist Slave, Slave Wages, and The Human Slaughter House.

Despite the polemic of the last thirty pages of the novel, this is an excellent, tragic story. My tendency, like a nervous laugh, is to make light of the death and despair by creating satirical titles for the book. A Working Man, A Politician and a Policeman Walk Into a Bar. Can’t Get No Satisfaction. A travel brochure title like Enjoy the Windy City. But I create these nervous laugh titles because The Jungle is full of death, despair, injustice, misogyny, racism and class oppression. I don’t mean to make light of the dire circumstances surrounding Jurgis. Instead, the satire is my way of wading through the ocean of pain these people deal with while working for the animal slaughter industry in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century.