Packingtown Rhetorical Analysis

As the family’s living expenses increased, Ona and Stanislovas, one of Teta Elzbieta’s youngest children, are forced to look for jobs. The jobs in Packingtown, the town in which most immigrants reside and where they live, involve back breaking labor conducted in unsafe conditions with little regard for individual workers. Furthermore, the immigrant community is fraught with crime and corruption. During the winter season, it is the most dangerous season in Packingtown, especially in the work field. Jurgis is forced to work in an unheated slaughterhouse in which it is difficult to see and he risks his life every day by simply going to work. The stockyards that are packed with cattle, pigs, and sheep demonstrate the efficiency of the economic machinery of the meatpacking industry. The real impact of Sinclair’s exposé is in the portrayal of the practice of selling diseased and rotten meat to the American public. It keeps them from spending money. The factory owners value their profits over the health of the workers and the public consumer. They use corrupt practices to sell rotting meat, and they can do it because they own the politicians who make the laws. Furthermore, the animals packed into the stockyards and herded into slaughter serve as metaphorical analogies for the immigrant workers who live in Packingtown because they are looking for …show more content…
He describes the depravity and immorality that run among the scab workers in order to charge the meat packers with encouraging sinful behavior. Gambling, fighting, and prostitution run in workers. He describes how these prostitutes, criminals, and gamblers handle the meat that is sold to the American public. The depredations of capitalism are a “jungle” of hidden nooks and crannies containing dirty secrets. Sinclair exposes the various levels of deception within the factories as well as the details of the wage laborer’s