He wanted to get a hold of the peoples’ eye by telling a harsh story of a tough/hard working man. The story shows that even the toughest of all the men still could not survive in America. Jurgus, the main character of the book finds the girl of his life (Ona) in his hometown in Lithuania, but her father won’t let them marry. Her father dies later on and Jurgus takes her family to America. When they first arrive in America they have a wedding and Upton Sinclair says probably the most important statement in the book “No one goes hungry”. That was the culture of Lithuania, but later in the story Jurgus realizes that in order to survive you have to be selfish. They all believed in the American Dream, but sadly they find out the hard way that the American Dream is just what people talked about, it hardly comes