The Jungle

The classification of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is ambivalent as it contains elements characteristic of both fiction and historical writing. These elements, including imaginary events which define fiction or literature, and the real events or statistics that comprise history, make it difficult to define The Jungle, as they are tightly interwoven throughout the novel. However, with the aid of a theoretical model for analyzing narrative, fiction, and historical writing provided by writers such as Hayden White and E. M. Forester, the relationship between fiction and history in The Jungle becomes clearer. White argues that Sinclair’s novel is not purely historical because imaginary events appear throughout the novel and work to group the novel within the literary genre. Yet, according to White, all historical writing must have a visible moral basis, and because fictional events and elements of literary narrative provide a moral basis, the novel maintains this aspect. Forester’s work augments White’s theory by explaining how literary devices such as plot development create meaning in Sinclair’s novel.

White’s essay “On Narrative” gives a definition of what constitutes as a legitimate historical narrative, information that is applicable to The Jungle as it helps classify the novel’s aspects of literary and historical writing. One key point White argues is that, “the very distinction between real and imaginary events, basic to modern discussions of both history and fiction, presupposes a notion of reality in which “the true” is identified with “the real” only insofar as it can be shown to posses the character of narrativity” (6). In other words, he says the real events that comprise a historical account must take on the narrative forms common to imaginary events--those of fiction or literature--to have a coherent meaning or “truth.” Thus, a historical narrative must show a moral stance. He also explains that this is a difficult process because unlike imaginary events, which by nature take expression via narrative, there is an, “artificiality [in] the notion that real events could ‘speak themselves,’” (4) and provide moral meaning. Thus, he continues, the historian must fashion the real events into narrative forms and use literary devices, a process which has contradictory effects: coaxing real events into narrative gives them meaning or “truth,“ which implies a moral stance; but the history loses objectivity due to this moral bias (17). Another stipulation of White’s theory is that “it is not enough that a historical account deal in real, rather than merely imaginary, events…[and] the events must be not only registered within the chronological framework of their original occurrence but narrated as well, that is to say, revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning” (5). Here, White emphasizes that a historical account must not only reflect the sequence of real events in time, but the events must be given a sense of “meaning” that explains causality.

In Aspects of the Novel, Forester supplements White’s theory by outlining narrative techniques used in literature to create meaning. Thus he provides useful definitions for analyzing how literary techniques operate in The Jungle to give it the moral meaning White requires of historical writing. In his book Forester clarifies the difference between a story and plot, and their relationship to causality. He explains that, “a story [is] a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality…the time sequence is preserved” (86). Thus, going back to White’s theory, a true history must have plot: it preserves the chronological order of events as they happen in real life, while the explanation of causality provides meaning, thereby meeting White’s guidelines.

The last two paragraphs of chapter twelve in The Jungle are representative of Sinclair’s use of both fictional and historical elements, and thus provide good material for defining how history and fiction coexist in the novel as specified by the theories of White and Forester. One element of this passage that is pertinent to the discussion of history versus fictional narrativity is its use of imaginary events: they disqualify the novel from the genre of historical narrative, and they reflect the difficulty of making real events “speak themselves” (White 4). So immediately, the imaginary events of these paragraphs--the story of Jurgis’s life--prevent The Jungle from being a historical narrative and classify the novel as a literary narrative, as according to White--a stipulation that is common sense. In this section, the imaginary events are used to give a context for the historical events--the laws regarding work related injuries and the data on average wages--which supports White’s claim that real events do not present themselves