• The Jungle: A Signature Performance by Casey Affleck

  • By: Upton Sinclair
  • Narrated by: Casey Affleck
  • Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (733 ratings)

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The Jungle: A Signature Performance by Casey Affleck

By: Upton Sinclair
Narrated by: Casey Affleck
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Editorial reviews

Originally best known as Ben Affleck's little brother, Casey Affleck has firmly established himself as a talented actor in his own right. Roles in the Ocean's Eleven trilogy and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), have made their critical mark in Hollywood. In his Signature Performance of Upton Sinclair's classic The Jungle, Affleck's diverse family ancestry (English, Irish, French, Swedish, German, and Scottish) is on display in his command of the multifarious languages of immigrants in early-1900s Chicago. In his distinctive boyish timbre, he even pronounces Lithuanian like a native.

Publisher's summary

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is a visceral and tragic story of immigrants trying to scratch out a living in the meatpacking plants of Chicago. The resulting public outcry led directly to the US government enacting changes in food and workplace safety practices still in place today.

With food production, business ethics, and immigration back in the news, Academy Award nominee Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone) taps into the emotion behind these issues to breathe life back into the struggling inhabitants of Packingtown. Affleck, a committed vegan and animal rights spokesman, delivers a moving performance that connects with the book’s enduring legacy.

The Jungle revolves around the life and family of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant whose dreams of a better life are crushed by punishing work in gruesome stockyards and an unforgiving city. Brilliantly written and vividly described, it provides a poignant and incredibly detailed snapshot of a striking point in American history.

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What listeners say about The Jungle: A Signature Performance by Casey Affleck

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Great book ruined by poor narrator....

This is truly a classic and a compelling tale, well worth reading. Unfortunately, The Jungle is ruined by Casey Affleck's sub-par narrating. Affleck's narration has a drawn-out, unrehearsed cadence of one who is reading a children's story to a particularly slow witted child.

Why is Casey Affleck narrating a book of this caliber in the first place ? He does not have a particularly good voice and like I said, his reading of The Jungle is underwhelming. I do not know what he is like as an actor, but he really disappoints here.

I would not rate this book as a waste of a credit -the story is engaging, it is just a bit of a disappointment with Affleck at the helm.

If Affleck was reading "Green Eggs and Ham" I am sure he would shine.

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35 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

One of great social protest novels of 20th Century

One of the great social protest novels of the 20th Century. 'The Jungle' is at once an indictment on the treatment of immigrants, poverty, American wage slavery, and the working conditions at Chicago's stockyards and meatpacking plants -- and simultaneously an exposé on the unsanitary conditions of the meat produced in the plants and led to Federal real food reform. Did I like it? Well, it pissed me off, so I thought it was a great piece of writing. It reminded me of the time when I was 19 and lived next to the Swift stockyards and meat packing plants. The smells that seemed more terrestrial than dirt seemed to flood back into my brain. 'The Jungle' shows how persuasive fiction can actually lead to real world reform. The FDA was created largely due to the public outcry after the publication of this book.

Jack London said in his review at the time, that the Jungle was the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery. The interesting fact, however, is Sinclair was more concerned about the people, the exploitation of immigrants and children, but the power of this novel ended up being tied to the condition of the food, and not the people. Sinclair was quoted as saying "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Regardless, Upton Sinclair throws a helluva punch.

Casey Affleck gives a strong performance in the Jungle. He is able to nuance through Lithuanian and Polish names and various emotions and tempos with ease and aplomb. He stays primarily in the background of the narration, but still gives power and emotion to his reading of this great American protest novel.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Why, oh why, Casey Affleck?!?...

This is a classic I always wanted to find the time to read. I jumped at the chance when I saw it featured on Audible. Unfortunately, it was difficult to appreciate Sinclair's timeless tale when narrated by Casey Affleck.
He had virtually no inflection and often sounded like he had a mouthful of saliva--the ending of words were difficult to discern in his coarse pronunciation.
I've listened to countless audio books over the years and there are so many good narrators out there practicing this craft, I fault the producers of this version for choosing an actor name over a quality reader.
Since the Lithuanian accent was so crucial to this story, why not use a narrator who has some understanding of this dialect?
Very disappointing recording.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Great book, poor choice for narrator.

I was so excited to see this classic offered on Audible; however, that was short lived as I started listening to it. Mr. Affleck comes across as an old man in pain and makes it very difficult to listen. At least he does a great job with the wide variety of ethic names though.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Caveat emptor: Powerful book, subpar narration

Somehow I never read this book in high school or even college. I can't believe what I missed! If you haven't read this book, you should. But while the text of the book is a truly powerful work, this audio version of The Jungle has been ruined by the narrator: Casey Affleck's reading was exceedingly uninspiring. (I believe another reviewer used the word "underwhelming" which is a very apt description!) Please find a paper copy or another audio version and save yourself a credit.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

It might make you a vegetarian, if not a socialist

With a hundred years of hindsight, we've learned so little.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is famous for disgusting America with its tales of meat packing workers falling into vats and rendered into lard, and all the things that went into sausages and tinned beef. (Cigar butts and poisoned rats not even being the most disgusting ingredients...) But as Sinclair said about his most famous book, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." The Jungle is not primarily about the problems of an unregulated meat industry. It's about the crushing brutality of capitalism, and the problems of unregulated accumulation of wealth. No wonder that Americans prefer the less political vegetarian version.

Although Sinclair was a muckraking socialist with an obvious agenda, The Jungle is still a compelling novel in its own right. Jurgis Rudkus is a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with his young wife Ona and his extended family of in-laws. Initially believing they have found the promised land of opportunity and plenty, they are quickly taken in by various schemes meant to impoverish, indebt, and enslave immigrants like them. At first only Jurgis has to work in Chicago's meatpacking district. He is young and strong and believes hard work will be rewarded, and those who warn him of how the meatpackers will use him up and dispose of him are lazy whiners. Of course, he soon discovers otherwise. The family undergoes one mishap after another, until within a year, even the children are reduced to selling newspapers on the street and still they are all barely staying alive.

Then things get worse, and worse, and worse. Jurgis is a modern-day Job, with no God to blame his troubles on, only capitalism. He has several ups and downs, but every time he catches a break, it's quickly followed by yet another brutal smackdown. Sinclair was trying to make the reader feel sorry for Jurgis and his poor family, all of whom end up dead, prostituted, or beggars by the end of the book, and you will. The poor man just cannot win, and if he makes mistakes and chooses the less noble path when given a choice, it's pretty hard to judge him if you've never been homeless on the streets of Chicago in the wintertime.

The Jungle is a grimly detailed look at early 20th century America. Sinclair was muckraking, so obviously he's showing the ugliest bits of America he can, but history proved that most of what he was alleging was true, even if his conclusions were questionable. Even if you are strongly anti-socialist, The Jungle is an eye-opening story, and still relevant after all these years. If you think that the horrors depicted in this book are relics of a previous era, just remember that to the extent that the very worst of these abuses are now curbed (somewhat) by government regulations, those government regulations are exactly what "free market" advocates hate and want to abolish.

4 stars. Knocking one star off because while Sinclair mostly kept his didacticism in check throughout the book, using gripping drama and only a little bit of exposition to arouse the horror he intended, the last chapter was nothing but socialist sermonizing, making it less a climax than the author climbing onto a soapbox to deliver his moral.

I have to ding this version for the unfortunate choice of narrator: I've enjoyed several of Audible's Signature Performances, but Casey Affleck's reading was monotonous and completely lacking in passion. His voice lacked distinction, and he sounded like a schoolboy reading a book aloud to the class. Not every celebrity actor makes a good audiobook narrator.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent!

Somehow I have never read this book. I was amazed! Casey Affleck did a terrific job reading it.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

AMERICAN POOR

“The Jungle” is a grim tale written by Upton Sinclair about the meat-packing industry in early 20th century America. Sinclair exposes the dark side of poverty, urbanization, and immigration in the United States. It reminds one of Charles Dickens’ stories of child labor in London but does not offer much warmth or balance. Sinclair’s story offers no respite from utter degradation. There is no respite for a reader to believe there is any redemption for being poor in Chicago in the early 1900s.

Every country in the world benefits and suffers from the nature of man and the effects of urbanization; none offer Eden. America remains a land of opportunity. America still offers the best known vehicle for freedom, but equality of opportunity is a work in progress. As long as the American poor remain hidden; the rich and middle class will avert their eyes, mutter “get a job”, and think the poor get what they deserve.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great book awful narration

Great story, but much better read off a page then to listen to Casey Affleck. I could barely stand to listen to his whiney teenager sounding voice. Glad I got this on sale because it is still not worth what I paid. If another version is released it should be given for free to all who bought this one.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

uninspiring and humourless

I only persevered to the end as I wanted to know how wretched and how low the characters in the novel would become! The narrator started the story in a style that I thought any moment he would fall asleep. His mono-syllabic tones nearly put me to sleep quite often and I wanted to give him a virtual nudge him so that he would remain on task! However he finished (probably no fault of his own but the author's), ended the oration with a loud shouting tone of someone on a soap-box. Someone who did not take a breath and was an absolute unionist zealot with a pinch of Lutheran/Methodist fervor thrown in!! Had a 'downer' for days after!! Did not enjoy this book at all as it was very disjointed, depressing, and bible-bashing.

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3 people found this helpful