Cultural Transformations in the Jungle - Compulsion of Circumstances - Research Paper Example

Cultural Transformations in “The Jungle Compulsion of Circumstances Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” deals with the story of an immigrant family with a view of working out the theme of a flux of changes which takes place in the socio-political and cultural background of the US society in the first half of the 1960s. In the novel, Sinclair has depicted the Jurgis family’s pursue after the American Dream and its hollowness. The novel depicts a lot of the transformational contexts during a turbulent period which ranges from the end of the Reconstruction to around the year 1910. These were the changes that had been induced by the rise of the metropolis, the development of a national economy and, to a crucial extent, by the industrial revolution –which has been viewed by highly educated people (including Sinclair) as the feverish mechanization of human life - arousing deep tensions and turbulences in the sociopolitical culture of the American society around 1890s. Sinclair’s readers may ask whether the transformations in the culture of the Lithuanian immigrants, who occupy the central themes of the novel, will suffice the cultural transformations of the US society. But while asking the question, one has to bear in mind the fact that the novel presents a particular aspect of American society in which the society’s socio-political-cultural variables of social transformations allow other cultures to be assimilated and to be fused with its own cultural traits in order to produce another which is more global and tolerant in nature. Consequently, the traits of the socio-political-cultural-economic transformation of the Lithuanian immigrants’ culture and their assimilations into the mainstream US culture serve as the prototype of the cultural changes of the US society around the first half of the 1960s. An in-depth analysis of the novel will necessarily trace about three phases of cultural backgrounds: the cultural backgrounds of Lithuania, as well as the stockyards of Chicago in particular and America in general. In the first place, Lithuanian culture is put into contrast with the harsh and hostile features of a mechanized Chicago society. Apparently, the Lithuanians’ dodged attempts to preserve their culture and values come in the next place and eventually face the adversity of their steps. Then finally, they are forced to adapt themselves and their culture to the changed circumstances. These adaptations necessarily yield into new cultural forms that are capable of surviving in the hostile environment of industrialization. The attempts of the Lithuanians to preserve their native values, norms and traits of culture are evident throughout the whole novel. But in the beginning of the novel, the marital culture and other cultural values that are observed in an exuberant environment are livelier than in any other part of the novel. These wedding customs of the Lithuanians have had to go through the inevitable transformations and have to adapt themselves to the changed circumstances of life in Chicago. Throughout the first six chapters, the Lithuanian marital customs such as the matchmaker episode, wedding ceremony, wedding feast, very often accompanied by music, wedding songs, dances etc seem to exist in more or less modified forms. As Suk Bong Suh says, “Lithuanians seem to have preserved much of these traditional wedding customs in America, though in somewhat modified form. Among others, the detailed descriptions of the wedding feast, veselija, show graphically to what extent they tried to preserve their old customs in a new environment” (Suh 11). Being the part of the agrarian society norms, the Lithuanian wedding tradition includes serving abundant foods and drinks during the marriage ceremony. As Sinclair remarks, “It was one of the laws of the veselija that no one goes hungry, and, while a rule made in the forests of Lithuania is hard to apply in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children who ran in from the street, and even the dogs, went out again happier” (Sinclair 2). But this tradition soon proves to be extravagance in the different circumstances of Chicago. In order to maintain the tradition, the Jurgis family has to run into debt of one hundred dollars. One thing is remarkable that the new Lithuanian generation is more prone to embrace and adapt to the adversary of the novel circumstances of Chicago. For example, Jurgis and Ona decide to cut the costly wedding feast. But the response of Ona’s stepmother is: “What! She would cry. To be married on the roadside like a parcel of beggars! No! No!" (Sinclair 75). Though the wedding is performed with the feast, it finally turns into a struggle for the old to defend the remnant of their culture, as the narrator notes, “Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this day they cling with all their power of their souls — they cannot give up the veselija. To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat — and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going” (Sinclair 14). There is a significant rift between the reactions of the old and the young generations to the industrial culture of Chicago stockyards, as well as its corruption. The young generation is more embracive to the latest American fashion and sentiments. But the aged generation plays a reactionary role to any change in the existing traditional culture. Especially the young girls put an extra “importance upon the possession of a fashionable hat that brings girls of all classes and all nations to one level” (Montgomery 59-60). They are very cautious about their dress and speech while their parents adhere to their old tone and fashion. These conflicts between the old and the new ones are vivid in the following line, “Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail of home — an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily…… the young….to speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing. The girls wear ready-made dresses or shirtwaist …… some move with grave dignity” (Sinclair 5). The trend of change within the old Lithuanian traditions in most cases is forced to adapt to the financial crunches that the family faces in the context of industry based society of Chicago. At the death of Kristoforas, Elzbieta adheres to the traditional funeral customs. She manages the traditional funerals for every family at their death in spite of the great financial difficulties. In this regard, the younger ones are more practical to take their decisions. This practicality is evident in Jurgis’s decision to bury their child by the city as they cannot afford money for the funeral. Elzbieta urgently begs money from her neighbors for the dead to have “a mass and a hearse with white plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to mark the place” (Sinclair 151). Her adherences to the traditional customs do not necessarily mean that she is ignorant of the financial crisis of the family. She tries to solve any difficult situation which the family is caught in. Indeed, the conflicts between the past cultural values of Jurgis’s family and the circumstance-driven cultural transformations make the best part of the novel. The main stream of transformations of culture in the novel lies in the thread how the exuberant and exotic spirit of Lithuanian culture yields to the lethargy of concrete jungle of an industrial society. As Suh says, “Probably the most striking historical touch is the opening chapter in which he describes the veselija, the wedding celebration, of the main hero, Jurgis Rudkus, and his bride, Ona Lukoszaite” (Suh 10). The exuberant starting of the people of a particular culture in the lifeless trend in the industrialized society and the process of its tragic dying out appears to bewilder one who is unaware of the pressing impacts of the cultural transformations in the society. The cultural transformations, evident in the novel, have a crucial concern with the migration of a great number of Lithuanians together with the immigrants from the Southeastern Europe to America around the late 19th century. Sinclair is cautious enough not to violate the propriety of the interactions among the cultures while fictionalizing them in his novel. In the beginning chapters of the novel, Sinclair depicts the adaptation process of the Lithuanian immigrants to the industrial environment of America. This process of adaptations is viewed through the struggle of Jurgis’s family to preserve their cultures and the compulsion to assimilate their culture in new forms into a industrial society, the lethargy of which is best characterized in Sinclair’s speech, “This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one” (143). In the slaughterhouse, the workers apply harmful chemicals like borax, glycerin, phosphate, etc to keep the meat’s color and smell intact. For Jurgis, being absorbed into such practice of adulterating food seems to be the adulteration of his own native Lithuanian culture. Works Cited Montgomery, Louise. A Study of Chicago's Stockyards Community: The American Girl in The Stockyards District Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1913. Print. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1906. Print. Suh, S. Bong. “Lithunian Wedding Traditions in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle”. Lituanus. 33 (1), 1987. 18 Feb, 2008. http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_1_01.htm Read More