Pork Industry

This image is a compilation of 7 shots stitched together to create a panorama of the pork industry in Chicago during the early 1900's. It shows the hogs stationed in their pens, and the process they go through to the "hog wheel" where they are lifted up by one foot and carried toward the hog stripping station, then to be boiled, and then to a final assembly line to be cut up and cured etc...and prepared to be packaged, stored, and sold. Similarly to the cattle of the meat packing industry, the hogs were not well cared for and they were kept in crowded pens until they were slaughtered by the thousands throughout the duration of the day. It is clear through this panorama that the process was not a humane, nor a hygenic one. It is also clear that there is some form of chaos throughout this picture--there are hundreds upon hundreds of hogs, and it's hard to pinpoint just one to focus on. In fact, because it's a panorama, it's relatively difficult to pinpoint any true focus point in the picture until the eye reaches the hog wheel, where the hogs are lifted out of the crowd they were once in, and essentially singled out, if only for a brief moment. This also brings a lot of sensory elements to the photo. The intense squealing-especially when the pigs are taken by surprise and lifted up on the hog wheel to their slaughter-is easy to imagine in this scene. Similarly to this photo, Upton Sinclair also presents elements of sense in The Jungle, especially regarding the hog wheel. He reveals the horrible truth of the stockyards to his readers--just as this panorama reveals the chaos within them. The Chicago Packing Town stock yards strip the animals (in the case of this panorama, the pigs) of their dignity, and any control they could have over their lives--not that they really had any in the first place. Sinclair uses the imagery of a hog's complete loss of control over it's life, and applies it to the life and characteristics of Jurgis, who experiences first hand how the industry within Packing Town slowly chips away, tortures, and destroys them in order to expose the evils of such a corrupt system. Sinclair often ties what happens to animals into what happens to humans in The Jungle by creating similar circumstances and applying animal-like features--specifically in the circumstances of Jurgis. In the panorama, the only time a hog is recognized as an individual is right before it is flung to it's death by the hog wheel. Similarly, Jurgis is only truly recognized as an individual after he becomes crazed from the effects of the capitalist system he finds himself trapped in. By attributing animal-like characteristics and situations to Jurgis, Sinclair emphasizes how capitalism doesn't recognize humans as individuals, but rather as mere parts of a greater process working towards the success of a materialistic value.