The Jungle

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-5

Reading Check

1. Why are Teta and Dede in “an anxious conference” during the wedding?

2. What are the first two words that Jurgis and his traveling companions learn in English?

3. What is Jurgis’s job?

4. What does the phrase “speeding up the gang” mean?

5. Which sentiment bonds the workers of the factories?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Describe how Dede Antanas’s work environment has affected his health in Chicago.

2. Compare and contrast the appearances of the older and younger generations at Jurgis and Ona’s wedding.

3. Describe Jurgis’s character. Why did he decide to immigrate to Chicago?

4. What does Chapter 3 focus on? How is Sinclair’s narration juxtaposed with Jurgis’s impressions of the stockyards?

5. Summarize Jurgis and his companions’ fears of housing insecurity. What opportunity do they come across in Chapter 4?

6. How does Jurgis feel about enrolling in unions? What comment does Sinclair make about Jurgis and economic systems?

Paired Resource

“The People of the Stockyards”

•  The Packingtown Museum in Chicago shares information on the different immigrant groups that worked in the stockyards outside Chicago.
• Compare and contrast the stories of the immigrants in the above resource with Jurgis’s.

Chapters 6-10

Reading Check

1. Why did Ona and Jurgis not marry immediately?

2. List the changing demographics of Packingtown, according to Grandmother Majauszkiene.

3. Which event throws a wrench into Marija and Tamoszius’s plans to marry?

4. Why does Jurgis enroll in English classes?

5. Who employs the meat inspectors?

6. What separates management from the workers of the factories?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Who is Grandmother Majauszkiene? What information does the family learn from her?

2. Describe some challenges Jurgis and his family experience in Chapter 7.

3. Summarize Jurgis’s changing opinion of unions.

4. Describe some of the potential health hazards that workers in Packingtown experience.

5. Summarize the financial troubles that the family faces in Chapter 10.

Paired Resource

“Child Labor in America 100 Years Ago”

• The Atlantic’s 2015 pictorial article documents child labor in the early 20th century.
• Based on the novel and the link above, how does child labor relate to the novel’s theme of Capitalism’s Relationship to the Family? (subscription may be required)

Chapters 11-15

Reading Check

1. Why are the strikes in Packingtown largely unsuccessful?

2. What is the name of the conglomeration that controls the Packingtown firms?

3. Why does Jurgis struggle to find work again?

4. Which family member dies at the beginning of Chapter 13?

5. Which “specter” haunts Jurgis?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is Jurgis’s injury? How does this injury affect the family? Describe what measures the family must take in Chapter 12.

2. What notable events happen to Stanislovas and Jonas during the winter?

3. Describe how the family dynamic changes after Jurgis begins to work at the fertilizer factory.

4. What type of meat does Elzbieta’s department work with? Describe one disturbing discovery that she makes at work.

5. In Chapter 15, Jurgis learns that Ona has been lying about her whereabouts. What is the cause of this lie? Describe what happens when Jurgis finds out the truth.

Chapters 16-21

Reading Check

1. Why is the coffee that Jurgis is served in prison called “dope?”

2. What is the name of Jurgis’s new cellmate, and what type of work does he do?

3. Why do the women give Jurgis money in Chapter 19?

4. Who is “Jack?”

5. What small luxury does Jurgis begin to buy with new wages that he uses to practice English?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Jurgis’s inner monologue in Chapter 16 focus on?

2. Why does Stanislovas visit Jurgis in the Cook County jail? How does Jurgis respond?

3. Summarize what unsettling information Jurgis learns upon visiting his house after being released from jail.

4. Compare and contrast Elzbieta and Jurgis’s approaches to grieving Ona’s death.

5. Describe what news of relief the “settlement worker” brings for Jurgis and the family.

Paired Resource

The Political Machine of Chicago

• The Encyclopedia of Chicago website discusses the variety of ways local machine politics affected the development of Chicago.
• How did political machines include the migrant communities which they also exploited? Describe how the Chicago political machine exemplifies the theme of The Law and Government as Agents of Violence.

Chapters 22-26

Reading Check

1. How does Antanas die?

2. Where does Jurgis spend “the pleasantest Christmas he had had in America”? (Chapter 23)

3. Why does Jurgis believe the preacher’s message about “saving souls” was inappropriate for impoverished men?

4. In which ways is the local “machine” against Jurgis on his second arrest?

5. How much money does Jurgis negotiate for his new wage during the Beef Strike?

6. Which group of people want violence during the Beef Strike?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What type of life does Jurgis turn to after Antanas’s death? How does this new lifestyle compare with his life in Packingtown?

2. Why does Jurgis return to Chicago? How is he able to secure employment?

3. Summarize Jurgis’s adventure with Freddie.

4. What does Jurgis learn about the “high-class criminal world of Chicago”? How does this knowledge apply to him?

5. Compare and contrast Jurgis’s work in the stockyards prior in the novel to Chapter 25. Why does he want a job again in the stockyards?

6. How does Packingtown change during the Beef Strike?

Paired Resource

“The Union Stockyards: ‘A Story of American Capitalism’”

• PBS station WTTW’s Chicago Stories segment focuses on the working conditions and strikes in Chicago’s stockyards.
• How would Sinclair argue for The Nature and Necessity of Socialism based on the conditions of the stockyards?

Chapters 27-31

Reading Check

1. What “Providence” brings many people to the political campaign rally for Senator Spareshanks?

2. How does Stanislovas die?

3. What substance is Marija addicted to?

4. What does Jurgis learn about his new employer?

5. What is the last line of the novel?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Describe how Jurgis’s situation changed from Chapter 26 to Chapter 27.

2. Summarize what Jurgis learns about Marija’s job at the brothel. How does he feel about this discovery?

3. Who is Comrade Ostrinski? What does he tell Jurgis? Describe Jurgis’s reaction.

4. Which social theory does this quote describe? “Life was a struggle for existence, and the strong overcame the weak, and in turn were overcome by the strongest.” (Chapter 31)

Recommended Next Reads 

Oil! by Upton Sinclair

• Sinclair’s 1927 novel about the oil industry in California

Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams

• Progressive Era reformer Addams’s 1910 autobiographical account of her work in a settlement house in Chicago.
• Twenty Years at Hull House on SuperSummary