Sinclair Lewis

For most of human history, people have spent their lives changing. Our ancestors lived very different lives from us, and our descendents are likely to also live different lives. However, sometimes change happens over a very long time, and one lifetime may not be enough experimenting with the world. There are many different ways to live today, but humans have settled into a single life without first seeing what else there is to do, and the pain of not knowing what the world has to offer can cause dissatisfaction among people from doing the same thing over and over again. Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, shows some of the effects that doubting one’s own life may lead to. Babbitt was dissatisfied with his current life, but after going out and doing…

Born and raised in a tiny Minnesota prairie town, few would have guessed that young and down-to-earth Sinclair Lewis would become one of America’s most celebrated authors and outspoken liberal thinkers. Lewis didn’t discover this exact destiny until his 20s, but from his early teens, Lewis could tell that the prairie village of his birth would be far too limiting for his future. In 1902, he travelled east to attend Oberlin Academy (Oberlin College’s preparatory high school), but it was on the…

Many of the GREASES spoke on some common subjects but for my essay I would like to discuss William Yeats and Sinclair Lewis. Both of these authors spoke on social issues and society in their era's. I think the main subject they both highlighted in many of their stories were women and the way society viewed them. They both tell stories of a young women but the stories are in the voice of a man. For instance, "Leda and the Swan" and "Main Street" there are clearly idealistic views for both of…

Child Labor Committee Report in 1911, two breaker boys, young mine workers who separate coal from slate rock, were either injured or killed after they “fell or were carried by the coal down into the car below. One was badly burned and the other was smothered to death.” (Doc B) Clearly, the lives of children should be preserved instead of being taken away. To continue, the photos that were taken by Lewis Pine of the breaker boys in the mine show them working in cramped conditions and breathing in…

depicts the corruption and crime on the streets and in large food companies. This novel follows a man named Jurgis Rudkus as he and his wife Ona travel to America with their relatives during the Gilded Age. Upton Sinclair wrote this in attempt to push socialism, but instead enlightened the readers to what was going on in the places they get their food from. In Sinclair’s novel, most of the working men are getting things done in dishonest ways, but feel no shame in doing so. They will lie,…

Propaganda in “The Jungle” The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel exploiting the lives of Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago during the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century. The immigrants have a goal of achieving the American dream, and as the story goes on they are faced with the horrors of the meat packing industry. Upton Sinclair is a yellow journalist and muckraker during the progressive era, therefore the story is bound to have exaggeration in order for him to succeed in…

The Jungle The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a book about a family of immigrants who came to America to try and form a better life for themselves and their family. The book mainly focused on the pain parts of Urbanization and the struggles that each main problems came with. For example, crime and corruption was one of the main struggles of urbanization at the time. The government inspector at the factory Jurgis works at dosen’t stop the bad, rotten meat from going through to processing. Many…

When it comes to writing fictional works, not many authors relived the fame and received criticism like prominent author Upton Sinclair and his work The Jungle. When writing The Jungle, Mr.Sinclair did not think he would stumble upon the conditions that lead to better regulation of labor and food distribution laws. Sinclair's novel is brought to life through the eyes of a Lithuanian immigrant by the name of Jurgis Rudkus, a meatpacker at Brown and Durnham’s meatpacking industries. The novel did…

faced (Upton Sinclair 205). Which is why people ask, how bad were the immigrants being treated? The answer to that question is, pretty bad. There are, however, three points that show how bad the immigrants were being treated. Those three points are an immigrant’s social outlook, expendability, and gullibility. Now here is the first point. It…

Duke Schultz, born Arthur Flegenhiemer in 1902, was a very notable American East coast gangster who was remarkably successful during and after the prohibition era. Schultz successfully carved out his own chunk of success in the violent New York organized crime world by being even more ruthless and violent than any competitors. Schultz helped shape the culture at the time but also was very much shaped by the culture that he worked his way to the top of. He was a very successful European jew in an…