The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
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Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, is a symbolic novel that played a crucial role in the United States. This is why I decided to look at different book covers of The Jungle. What I noticed was intriguing. Most covers were photos of downtown Chicago from the early 1900’s; others were simple covers of a tiny factory with his name all on the bottom.
I noticed that most of the covers were the same. They all had the same theme regarding the cover. All of them consisted of a variety of factories, usually black and white, with smoke coming out of the top of the chimney. Other photos consisted of images of dead animals such as pigs and cows. I don’t believe that the covers are influenced by the era too much. Yes, some look old and outdated compared to others, but the date that the book was published and set in was also in an era where these covers would be acceptable. The book itself was published in 1906 and was set in the same time frame, so the cover itself should look like that time frame. So, in that aspect, I definitely believe that the book covers all represent the era in which the book is taken place in.
The two book covers that I decided to use are two opposite covers. The first photo is the original cover of the novel when it was first published. As I stated before, it is pretty simple. A green background with a photo of a factory. Though this seems pretty basic, I interpret this as a sign of hard work. The fact that the background cover is green, to me, represents the idea of money and wealth (which plays a large role in the book itself). The fact that the cover means wealth and that there is a factory means that there is a potential that in order to achieve wealth, one must work.
The second book cover is a newer cover of the book. The second photo is a version published in 2014, so newly republished. This cover is more detailed. Another picture of a factory but it has animals for both transportation and for the factory itself. I personally think that the newer cover represents a life before technology. It demonstrates the life that my ancestors lived before I was born, the hardships that they endured. The cover contains people working and the factory smoking from the chimney; this encourages me to think that the book is about obtaining hard work like I said before.
These two book covers are totally opposite. Between one hundred years, The Jungle has gone through drastic changes in art. Though these changes seem significant, they both portray hardships that the characters in the book endure. They might be complete opposite in looks, but both the covers portray significant symbols that The Jungle demonstrates.
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If you can, in the future, try to break up your blog posts into individual paragraphs (so it’ll be easier for me / your peers to comment on individual sections, rather than on the whole thing). It just requires putting some extra spaces in between paragraphs.
That said: I think your point about how many of these book covers tend to feature the landscape of Chicago is interesting. It suggests, to some degree, that the events described by Sinclair in The Jungle are particular to Chicago — like they couldn’t have occurred anywhere else in the US. What do you think about that? And what kind of a reputation does that garner for the city of Chicago (affectionately immortalized by the poet Carl Sandburg as the “Hog Butcher for the World“?
I also like your point about the newer edition’s focus on “life before technology”; the cover art for the 2014 edition certainly seems interested in positioning Sinclair’s novel within the context of the industrial revolution, in particular, and of life under the auspices of modernity.
Love the aesthetic of this one.