- The hard-working family is defrauded by a real estate dealer into buying an overpriced, rickety home,
- Marja, one of Jurgis’s relatives, find herself without a job when her factory closes for the winter,
- Jurgis’s father dies from the horrid conditions at his job,
- Marja, in a new job, is cheated out of some of her pay,
- Marja is fired for complaining about her missing pay,
- Jurgis, the primary bread-winner, suffers at twisted ankle in his factory and is out of work, without pay, for three months,
- Janas, another relative, walks away, never to be seen again,
- Ona, Jurgis’s wife, is raped by her boss,
- Jurgis goes to jail for brutally beating Ona’s boss,
- Marja cuts her hand at work and is out of a job,
- The family, unable to make enough money because Jurgis is locked up, is evicted from their home,
- Ona, pregnant with her second child, loses the baby,
- Jurgis is blacklisted for beating one of the bosses, and
- Marja ends up in a brothel.
Book Review: Gritty, Oppressive, but Not Ugly Enough, “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair Gets the Graphic Novel Treatment
The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair,
adapted and illustrated by Kristina Gehrmann,
translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger
Ten Speed Press, 384 pages, $24.99
Kristina Gehrmann’s graphic novel version of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle is suitably gritty and oppressive, but probably not ugly enough.
I’m not sure it would be possible for this kind of illustrative work to capture the visceral angst of Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and his extended family, new to Chicago and the Stockyards, and victims of scams, sharpers, and the unbridled capitalist system of that turn-of-the-century era.
It's interesting that the only movie ever made of the novel was produced in 1914 and often screened at Socialist meetings but is now lost. Since then, no filmmaker has tried to tackle this sprawling melodramatic story in which just about everything that could go wrong for Jurgis and his family does.
In her 381-page book, Gehrmann, a Hamburg, Germany-based illustrator, rearranges much of Sinclair’s story, trims a lot, and shifts some of the descriptions in the original text into her characters’ dialogue.
Although Gehrmann’s book is a more condensed version of Sinclair’s story, her litany of scenes in which evils befall the Rudkuses is nearly as lengthy as his—scenes in which: