How The Jungle drew on The Divine Comedy
A documented line of influence: Upton Sinclair demonstrably engaged Dante Alighieri’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1320
MedievalThe influenced
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair · 1906
ModernRelevance
6/10
On The Jungle’s page
- The Jungle is a journey through hell, and Sinclair says so in Dante's own name
- He invokes Dante twice inside the novel — the peasants who declared the poet "had been into hell" — to frame Packingtown's horror against the Comedy
- Reading Dante first sharpens what Sinclair is doing: Jurgis's descent through the stockyards is structured like a passage through the circles of the damned
On The Divine Comedy’s page
- Sinclair turns Packingtown into a modern Inferno — and names Dante to make sure you can't miss it
- The fertilizer workers leaving Durham's "looked like Dante, of whom the peasants declared he had been into hell"
- Jurgis's ruin reads as a descent through the circles: the Comedy gives the stockyards a measure of damnation no muckraking report could