Samuel the Seeker Upton Sinclair 9781287472391 Books
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Samuel the Seeker Upton Sinclair 9781287472391 Books
Samuel the Seeker, a novel by Upton Sinclair, was published in 1910. It tells the story of Samuel Prescott, an idealistic young man who has lived a sheltered existence on his parents' farm somewhere in the midst of an idyllic mountain wilderness. When his father dies, he sells his share of the land to his brothers and heads for New York City. Along the way, however, he is robbed and ends up penniless on the streets of Lockmanville. This babe in the woods, lost in the big city, gets an eye-opening education into the ways of the world. He learns that society is divided between the rich and the poor. The rich often acquire their wealth through corruption and thievery while the poor starve. He is given an introduction into the doctrine of Herbert Spencer, a sociologist who asserted that human society is a competitive struggle for resources, and that the wealthy are the successful combatants in the survival of the fittest. While most of humanity has resigned themselves to this status quo, Samuel refuses to accept this shameful state of affairs and seeks to reform the system.Samuel is so innocent and naive, he makes Forrest Gump look jaded. Sometimes Sinclair plays Samuel's ignorance and gullibility for laughs, but most of the time the tone of the book is one of righteous indignation. Sinclair was a critic of organized religion, but he revered Jesus Christ as the ultimate Socialist. Samuel can't stand the thought of anyone choosing to make money instead of living their life by the example of Christ. After rooting out the guilty perpetrators responsible for Lockmanville's societal ills, he asks the counsel of a clergyman, who rebuffs him for his unrealistic attitude towards good and evil. The reader can't help but feel the same way. Spencer, Marx, and Christ could spend all day arguing about how to make the world a better place, but I'm pretty sure they would all agree that whining and pleading is not the way to go about it. Unfortunately, that's what Samuel does for at least three-quarters of the book. He bounces around from offender to offender, beseeching them to turn themselves in. Towards the end he starts to find a more productive means of activism, but it's too little too late, for he and his story have already grown tiresome.
Upton Sinclair writes preachy novels, and that's a big part of his appeal. Every one of his books is an attempt to change the world, which is what usually makes his work so refreshing and inspiring. His great novel The Jungle was criticized for having a Socialist sermon for its conclusion, but Samuel the Seeker is almost all sermon. Sinclair takes preachiness so far over the top it becomes off-putting. Even for his most avid fans, it's hard to clearly ascertain the practical purpose of this book. It seems Sinclair's intention is to point out the ridiculousness of a world where money matters more than people's lives by viewing society through the eyes of an unsullied man-child. The problem is that Samuel is so clueless it's difficult for all but those utterly free of cynicism to root for him. When one character tells Samuel, "You take everything with such frightful seriousness," the vast majority of readers will nod their heads in agreement and utter a sigh of "Amen!" This novel will appeal only to the most religious of card-carrying Socialists—a very small audience indeed. Everyone else would do better to skip this book. If you admire Sinclair for his social conscience and want to learn more about his Socialist ethics, you'd be better off rereading The Jungle, or give his excellent novel 100%: The Story of a Patriot a try.
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Samuel the Seeker Upton Sinclair 9781287472391 Books Reviews
Samuel the Seeker is a tongue in cheek version of a Horatio Alger book. Samuel starts off life as a naive farmer's boy who must leave home to find work in New York. Unfortunately, he never makes it to the big city and is waylaid in a medium-sized town that has problems of their own. He finds that employment is tough to find and that the odds are stacked against him.
Samuel's adventures mirror those of an Alger book. He finds employment by saving the life of a rich person. He is happy working there until he realizes the debauchery his employer practices. This goes against Samuel's Christian upbringing and again he hits the street in search of work. Ultimately, Samuel learns that the world isn't a friendly place. The church only offers minimal succor and fails to punish and correct the wealthy members who cause the poor misery.
While the events were a bit hokey like that of a rags to riches Alger story, Sinclair's identifying of many social ills are crystal clear. Fans of Sinclair will enjoy this book as well as those who are interested in social injustices and socialism.
Samuel the Seeker is, to put it bluntly, a pro-socialist (dare I say Communist?) morality play against the evils of Capitalism with a capital C. If this brief description already has you gritting your teeth in ideological rage, then it’s safe to say you aren’t going to enjoy this – or indeed, possibly any – Upton Sinclair novel.
Sinclair’s novel follows the journey of Samuel Prescott, an idealistic young farm boy who strikes out on his own to strike it rich when his father dies shortly after losing all of his savings in a bad stock market investment. What would typically be a rags-to-riches story becomes a rags-to-rags exercise in futility, as Samuel is confronted with every form of social injustice and societal ill that you can imagine. Upton introduces Samuel to the reader as a virtual blank slate with little more than farming and bible verses to inform his world view. Through the novel, Samuel eagerly adopts every world philosophy introduced to him, only to watch every ideology he accepts under the weight of his experiences when taken to their logical conclusion.
In just one example of Samuel’s numerous encounters, a professor who rescues Samuel from being jailed for vagrancy - a situation in itself a source of confusion for the young man – explains to him that the reason that some people are starving the streets while others have more than they could ever need is because of an economic Darwinism in which all people struggle to earn money to support themselves, but that only those who are worthy surviving actually succeed. Samuel easily buys into the logic of the professor’s argument, and being penniless and unable to find work himself, readily consigns himself to his deserved fate of starving to death, and flusters the professor when he asks him to help inform the local poor of their duty to die in order to make room for those more worthy than them.
Samuel is Sinclair’s satirical device in the flesh, much like Voltaire’s Candide, exposing the hypocrisies and fallacies of the world by actually believing in them… Until he stumbles upon a group of local socialists, whom he immediately distrusts until the truths the deliver to him actually play out as promised (although perhaps not as well as Samuel would have liked). This is where those who are natural inclined to disagree with anything of an anti-capitalist nature are apt to cry foul, since ideologies that Sinclair is in favor of are not portrayed as illogical and corrupt as the ones with which he aligns, and perhaps they have a point. Perhaps you can’t separate literature from philosophy when the former is specifically designed to be a vehicle of the later. However, if you are so inclined to look beyond Sinclair’s ultimate message – unless you agree with it, of course, of course – what you’ll find is a thought-provoking and well-executed social/political satire that, like all of the best ones, is still relevant today.
Samuel the Seeker, a novel by Upton Sinclair, was published in 1910. It tells the story of Samuel Prescott, an idealistic young man who has lived a sheltered existence on his parents' farm somewhere in the midst of an idyllic mountain wilderness. When his father dies, he sells his share of the land to his brothers and heads for New York City. Along the way, however, he is robbed and ends up penniless on the streets of Lockmanville. This babe in the woods, lost in the big city, gets an eye-opening education into the ways of the world. He learns that society is divided between the rich and the poor. The rich often acquire their wealth through corruption and thievery while the poor starve. He is given an introduction into the doctrine of Herbert Spencer, a sociologist who asserted that human society is a competitive struggle for resources, and that the wealthy are the successful combatants in the survival of the fittest. While most of humanity has resigned themselves to this status quo, Samuel refuses to accept this shameful state of affairs and seeks to reform the system.
Samuel is so innocent and naive, he makes Forrest Gump look jaded. Sometimes Sinclair plays Samuel's ignorance and gullibility for laughs, but most of the time the tone of the book is one of righteous indignation. Sinclair was a critic of organized religion, but he revered Jesus Christ as the ultimate Socialist. Samuel can't stand the thought of anyone choosing to make money instead of living their life by the example of Christ. After rooting out the guilty perpetrators responsible for Lockmanville's societal ills, he asks the counsel of a clergyman, who rebuffs him for his unrealistic attitude towards good and evil. The reader can't help but feel the same way. Spencer, Marx, and Christ could spend all day arguing about how to make the world a better place, but I'm pretty sure they would all agree that whining and pleading is not the way to go about it. Unfortunately, that's what Samuel does for at least three-quarters of the book. He bounces around from offender to offender, beseeching them to turn themselves in. Towards the end he starts to find a more productive means of activism, but it's too little too late, for he and his story have already grown tiresome.
Upton Sinclair writes preachy novels, and that's a big part of his appeal. Every one of his books is an attempt to change the world, which is what usually makes his work so refreshing and inspiring. His great novel The Jungle was criticized for having a Socialist sermon for its conclusion, but Samuel the Seeker is almost all sermon. Sinclair takes preachiness so far over the top it becomes off-putting. Even for his most avid fans, it's hard to clearly ascertain the practical purpose of this book. It seems Sinclair's intention is to point out the ridiculousness of a world where money matters more than people's lives by viewing society through the eyes of an unsullied man-child. The problem is that Samuel is so clueless it's difficult for all but those utterly free of cynicism to root for him. When one character tells Samuel, "You take everything with such frightful seriousness," the vast majority of readers will nod their heads in agreement and utter a sigh of "Amen!" This novel will appeal only to the most religious of card-carrying Socialists—a very small audience indeed. Everyone else would do better to skip this book. If you admire Sinclair for his social conscience and want to learn more about his Socialist ethics, you'd be better off rereading The Jungle, or give his excellent novel 100% The Story of a Patriot a try.
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