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The Jungle - Chapters 14-17 Summary The family knows all the dirty secrets of the meat-packing industry. The most spoiled of meats becomes sausage. All manner of dishonesty exists in the selling diseased, rotten, and adulterated meat to American households. The working members of the family fall into a silent stupor due to the grinding poverty and misery of their lives. Ona and Jurgis grow apart. Jurgis begins to drink heavily. He delivers himself from …

…beings are butchered in the service of profit-making as well as the animals. Hard work, family values, self-reliance, and self- motivated action do absolutely nothing to provide the means for social advancement. The wage laborers that populate The Jungle are moved inevitably towards ruin and abuse by forces beyond their control. Capitalism is a forces as inevitable and careless as nature. It picks off unfortunate individuals as carelessly as cold weather, disease, and heat exhaustion.