In both Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Tze Chen's Children of Invention both stories depict the immigrant experience and how it isn't always as great as the "American dream" is portrayed to be.
In The Jungle Sinclair shows how the corruption in Packingstown leads to the workers being exploited and abused. Their unfair treatment leads to them attempting to unionize and gain rights for themselves and fight back against corrupt officials. In an earlier scene where Jurgis is buying a house he has another lawyer look over his housing contract. However this lawyer is actually corrupt and friends with the person giving Jurgis the lease and lies to Jurgis. Jurgis is an immigrant and naive and doesn't realize he's being scammed. He ends up figuring out that the contract isn't what it seems to be. As a result of being deceived he becomes less trusting progressively over the novel.
In Children of Invention, Elaine is also victim to corruption and faces many problems of the immigrant experience. She is recruited by this company and they end up scamming her on paying her checks of medicine she invested her money in. She then is convinced into making another similar mistake as she joins a company called Gold Rep. This company is a triangle ponzi scheme and as Elaine begins working there she fails to see this. She is only eager to make the money and move her children back into their foreclosed home. This all ends in the scheme collapsing and Elaine losing money she invested and also faces legal trouble through her implication with the company.
I agree with you that there are some similarities between Sinclair's work and Chun's. For instance, immigrants are largely treated as second-class in Children of Invention, while they ARE second-class in Sinclair. Immigrants are taken advantage of (pyramid scheme in Children, housing contract scamming and vote scamming in The Jungle) consistently, and they are helpless against the torrent of capitalism and the American way of life.
ReplyDeleteI think there is also a main point of contrast, though, in what someone else mentioned in a different post. Sinclair uses anti-sentimentalism as a tool of reform of worker's rights (especially hopeless, helpless immigrants like Jurgis) and egalitarianism, whereas Chun's work is more a sentimentalist work, focusing on the positives and difficulties of family life. While Jurgis' family is fundamentally and essentially destroyed, Chang's kids fend for themselves, and Elaine is also fine on her own, even while she is arrested. This lack of aloof, anti-sentimentalist view, as well as the lack of naturalism (note that Raymond and Tina have grown, much unlike Maggie, for instance)leads to a more cinematically classical climax in the ending where everyone is together and, more or less, happy (all the characters have grown, at least, or are presumed to have).