Rhetorical Strategies

Anadiplosis, Personification, and Asyndeton: “And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.”(180)

Repetition: “hour after hour, day after day, year after year, it was fated that he should stand upon a certain square foot of floor from seven in the morning until noon, and again from half past twelve till half past five, making new a motion and thinking never a thought…” (79)

Simile: “The blood was pounding in his brain, like an engine’s throbbing; there was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly control his hands.”(145)

Repetition and Simile: “It was sickening, like a nightmare, in which suddenly something gives way beneath you, and you feel yourself sinking, sinking down into bottomless abysses”(76)

Trope: “They would wrap up in all they owned, but they could not wrap up against exhaustion.”(88)

Upton Sinclair’s style is characterized by frequent similes, and metaphors to expand on the imagery used to capture his readers. The use of figurative speach provides comparisons to everyday thoughts or ideas, for the many readers who are unfamiliar with the conditions of the workers of Packingtown. For example, when Jurgis Is hard at work at the fertilizer mills the horrid stench is gives him a pounding headache “like an engine’s throbbing”(145). This use of simile provides a physical example of heat and the great power of pressure from a machine,constantly pulsating in Jurgis’s head, intensifies one of his many struggles while trying to earn an honest man’s salary.