The Jungle / Sinclair, U. (2005) [Barnes & Nobel Ed.]

So, I started reading The Jungle a couple of weeks ago. Wow! What a gripping book. I've only had time to read it here and there, mostly while exercising--thus it's already a sweat-stained book--but it's been such a read. I'm gripped at the main character, an immigrant from Lithuania, Jurgis. The stories from Packingtown in Chicago are just too real and yet too easy to believe. Apparently this is the book that made real food inspection de rigeur in the US. I can believe why. In addition to that, this book has serious socialist overtones, well, better said, it's pretty much a case for socialist or social-democratic economic reforms. I don't know how much the reading public got those while they were reading it back then, but right now, it is quite clear to see that Sinclair's a socialist if not fully then at heart.

...And every time that a thought of it assailed him--a tendermemory, a trace of a tear--he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it down.

He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in his desperation. He had been a fool, a fool! He had wasted his life, he had wrecked it himself, with his accursed weakness; and now he was done with it--he woudl tear it out of him, root and branch! There should be no more tears and no more tenderness; he had had enough of them--the had sold him into slavery! Now he was going to be free, to tear off his shackles, to ris up and fight.

Whoa~. The sections of the story where you can see this explosion building-up are exciting, but I really felt what he meant while reading this section. Sigh. Why is the world such a place?

I wonder if there's a similar book or work of fiction that's out recently that would cause this much of an uproar. (Farenheit 9/11?)