A Script Writing Thingy

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and The Power of Words/ Books

Books. Thousands and thousands of works of art pieced together with 26 letters. I mean just books. *you may enter a dramtic pause at you leisure* And like me, many of you nerdfigters out there spend pretty much all of your time reading and crying and writing fanfiction about books. Reading the words someone spent time on and put together, that you cared enough to buy (or borrow from that one friend who is like a book Santa) is kind of freaking awesome.

By reading books, disussing them, sharing them, you are apart of something greater than any writer could ever imagine. Seriously though. Certain books have changed the course of history. Not because of the writers, but because of the readers. The readers of these books have the power to demand change and receive change, after they read something. This phenomenon is relivent in multiple occasions but today we will be looking at the effects The Jungle by Upton Sinclair had on all of America.

Upton Sinclair was an aspiring novelist in the early 20th century. He was born on September 20,1878 to a poor family with an alcoholic father. Despite having problems in his youth, he got his own collage education by writing stories for newspaers and magazines. Sinclair struggled with writing his first novel, then turned to the socialist party for help. He was then assigned by the socialist to expose the treatment of the immagrant workers in the meat packing factories in Chicago. Upton was focused on the immigrants while he went into the project. Then he saw what went on the meat packing factory-to the food. Let's just say you would rather eat a half cooked McDonalds hamburger soaked in the tears of young children then anything from that factcory.

Describing just some of what went on, Sinclair explained how the facilities were rarely cleaned and how any and everything would be packaged into meat including dust, rat poison, all the parts of a pig and I mean ALL the parts of a pig, dead rats, and in the worst case senarios human parts.

Even though the focus of the book was the mistreatment of the immagrants, everyone was focused on the truth about what they were eating on a daily basis. As you can imagine, the public went wild. They boycotted eating meat, and more importantly, pushed the government to make a change. Theodore Roosevelt read The Jungle and further investigated the meat-packing indusrty. Eventually the pure food and drug act was passed in 1906 to ensure that all food and/or medication was upfront about what was in the product. To this day Upton Sinclair is considered the one of the most successful muckraker of his time. Muckrackers were young journalist who exposed corupt nature in the government like Sinclair's novel did. Government officials and buisness men hated them for telling the public how they were making money, or cutting corners in their work. Sinclaire's sucess sparked growth in investigative journalism and proved that novelist could change the law.

Sinclair later went on and published many novels including: Oil!, King Coal, The Brass Chuck, and others with The Jungle reigning as his greatest feat. Upton Sinclair would go down in history as a great American novelist because, As Upton Sinclair's most famous quote states, " I aimed for the Public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Upton Sinclair died in 1968 but he will always be rememembered for the change that occured due to The Jungle and the fact that children everywhere are forced to read it in school ( although I read it for fun). Yet, Upton Sinclair would have acomplished nothing without the help of his readers. Everyone could have just sat around and done nothing. But that didn't happen. They stood up for something they were passionante about, and that happened to be food so no one could really argue with their logic.

I've come to realize that writers don't just give us storys and facts and entertainment, they give us words and words are power. We can chose to take the words we given an put them towards things that matter.

Just think about the powerful fanbases there are. Groups of people who love something and can and will work together to complete a task. We are living in a golden age. We have the internet. With the right book and enough passion we can decrease so much world suck. If America did it once with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, I bet we can do it agian.

John I'll see you Tuesday/ Hank I'll see you Friday

A/N: This is still under editing and I'm doing reasearch to work on adding more to the historical side of the script. Thank you. Dftba