How The Jungle drew on Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A documented line of influence: Upton Sinclair demonstrably engaged Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe · 1852
The Age of the NovelThe influenced
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair · 1906
ModernRelevance
8/10
On The Jungle’s page
- The Jungle was conceived as a sequel by analogy — Sinclair wanted to do for the wage slave what Stowe had done for the enslaved
- Stowe proved a novel could move a nation to outrage and policy; Sinclair simply pointed the same weapon at the meatpacking floor
- Read Uncle Tom's Cabin first and the ambition behind The Jungle snaps into focus — it's working a form Stowe perfected
On Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s page
- The book that invented the American protest novel — and handed Upton Sinclair his blueprint half a century later
- Sinclair set out to write "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the labor movement," trading Stowe's plantations for Chicago's slaughterhouses
- Jack London christened The Jungle "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery" — the lineage was acknowledged at birth