So I’ve been hyping up this essay for like months and it finally got graded. I’m keeping my professors notes in just for shits and giggles. I got a 92 :3. Anyways I’m the first person ever to compare Pathologic and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Enjoy.
“Pathing Logic” in the Jungle
Have you ever wondered if you entered a character's mind, what they would be thinking? And if you had control over their thoughts, what would you try to change in the real world? Imagine you enter the head of Little Red Ridinghood, and decide to have her give a piece of bread from her basket to the wolf. Would the wolf leave her grandma alone? Or would the wolf beg for more? When looking at a piece of media, whether written in a book or published online, the consumer wants to immerse themselves into that world. They want to understand what the characters go through, and sympathize with them during the hard times or celebrate the amazing ones. No matter the format, choices are a staple in writing. Ice-Pick Lodge’s Pathologic and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle both utilize narration styles, point of view and pathos to differentiate to their audience how themes like tradition, monetary hardship, and exploitation impact the reader’s sense of control or helplessness. Both have examples of where the protagonists become forced to make decisions on survival. It gives the reader a sense of helplessness, simply watching what happens around them and now being able to change anything.
The Jungle is a novel written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 during an era in American history known as the “Progressive Era” that lasted from 1890 to the 1920’s. It followed directly after the Gilded Age because of the disgusting health conditions of the families living in big cities due to industrialization and little to no workers rights (Citation). Developing cities could not keep up with the growing immigrant population. In “Chicago Workers during the Long Gilded Age” the authors state, “Industrialization, immigration, and urbanization became new sources of social conflict and instability. Industrial workers who experienced dangerous or exploitative conditions had little leverage to negotiate fair wages or workplace protections. New immigrants often faced suspicion and hostility from Anglo-Americans and older immigrants. Cities struggled to meet the demands that such rapid growth placed on housing, transportation, water, and sewage systems” (Layson, Hana and Leon Fink). The Progressive Era became a reform movement to try and fix the broken conditions of the working class immigrants by pushing for better pay and more worker rights.
Two years before Sinclair published the novel, he spent seven weeks researching the conditions of the immigrants, Sinclair writes in his autobiography. After his time spent within the meatpacking industry, he begins writing The Jungle on Christmas day. Upton Sinclair writes in his autobiography that many of the characters were based on real people he had seen in his two months in Packingtown, as well as the events he had witnessed playing a role in his writing of the novel. He writes, “I sat at night in the homes of the workers, foreign-born and native, and they told me their stories, one after one, and I made notes of everything. In the daytime I would wander about the yards, and my friends would risk their jobs to show me what I wanted to see” (Sinclair, “Autobiography” 110). His true intentions were to show the general public how immigrant workers are exploited, and the horrors they need to deal with on a daily basis, but instead of rallying around workers' rights, those who read the book were disgusted by the descriptions of the way their meats were treated and handled instead. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were passed the same year to combat the meat horrors described in Sinclair’s novel. Sinclair expressed his disappointment for the outcome of his novel because of the little done to benefit the workers.
The game Pathologic was created by the Russian game company Ice-pick Lodge. Nikolay Dybowski founded the company in 2002. He also took on the role of the creative director, giving him credit as the creator of the Pathologic game series despite leaving the company in March of 2025. There are three games, and three protagonists. Pathologic: Classic HD was a recreation of Pathologic (2005) that was released 10 years after the original. It became a reimagining of Pathologic, which struggled in non-Russian speaking countries mainly due to the poor translations. Both the original Pathologic and Pathologic: Classic HD follow the same paths of the three protagonists. Players can choose from the bachelor from the Capital Daniil Dankovsky, the haruspex returning to his father Artemy Burakh, or the changeling with magical hands Clara. All three of these characters have the same goal, to save the small Russian Steppe town of Gorkhon from the Sand Plague. After the success of Pathologic: Classic HD, Ice-pick Lodge released Pathologic 2 in 2019. This game follows just Artemy Burakh and his story, as opposed to the other two games in the series following all three characters. The only other major changes in Pathologic 2 were some NPC character backstory changes, giving Artemy Burakh friends in the town when he returns. On January 9th 2026, Pathologic 3 was released to the public after over a year of waiting. The game follows Daniil Dankovsky, and similarly to Pathologic 2, reimagines the original story.
Ice-pick Lodge discussed the idea of giving the player choice in an interview conducted by Oleg Chimde and translated to English by Vasyl Horbachenko. Scripter and quest designer for Pathologic 2 Denys Surdeykin says, “...you can’t ask a player question regarding it if you don’t let him decide - flight or fight, show mercy or murder, things like this.” During this section of the interview, they discussed the combat system of the second game. It was designed specifically to discourage the player from engaging in murder, but ultimately it’s up to the person playing to choose that. This can also be said for the dialogue choices provided when the player speaks to any NPC character. The different responses the player can choose can affect how the NPC character sees you–positively or negatively–and the NPC can even withhold information from the player.
Tradition in The Jungle presents through the lens of a Lithuanian family moving to a new location to start anew. There’s a distinct shift from what Jurgis and his family expect versus the reality of America at the time. They have an expectation of what America should be like through word of mouth from those around them. We read, “It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America, where a friend of his had gotten rich…and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man…” (Sinclair 24, The Jungle). The expectation of America was to pave the way to riches so that Jurgis’s family would no longer have to struggle with the high prices of Lithuania. The atmosphere shifts once the family finds themselves in the stockyards of Chicago, and it makes the reader feel unease and anxiety for the family. After spending some time in Packingtown and eventually settling down into their home, Jurgis and Ona express their desire to have a wedding, but they have no money to host a traditional Lithuanian styled one. When mentioned to Teta Elzbieta she freaks out and wants to cling onto what she’s used to, despite the dire situation the family is in money-wise. (Sinclair 62, The Jungle). This throws them into picking between their traditions from back home, or facing the truth of the financial struggles that prevent them from following them. It creates a feeling of despair in the reader, especially towards Teta Elzbieta. All she has ever known is her tradition back in her home country, and this change proves to be very distressing for her. She can’t fathom the fact that Jurgis and Ona want to marry the “American” way, and not the way that their family had for years.
The game takes tradition in a different way than the novel does. In Pathologic 2, Artemy Burakh’s heritage belongs to the indigenous group living in Gorkhon known as the Kin. During a conversation with the foreman of the Abbitoir Oyun, Artemy mentions that he is half of the indigenous group and half not. This provides a different perspective than in the novel because the Rudkus family is presumed to be entirely Lithuanian in descent, while Artemy has only half of the ethnicity of his home town. It makes for a more compelling choice between how Artemy chooses to approach the plague. Foreman Oyun continues the conversation by saying, “Let us revive the Kin. You will do it, not me. And you are to rule it” (Pathologic 2). Oyun wants Artemy to follow in his recently deceased father’s footsteps and act as a leader for the Kin. His people are suffering, and it’s up to Artemy to save them. It provides a dilemma for the player on how to approach the game itself because of the first person point of view, as opposed to the third person of the novel.
The point of view in both the game and the novel changes how the person consuming the content feels about what’s happening to the main characters. Pathologic 2 puts the player in control of how they want to approach the situations they’re put in, whether they want to follow more modern medical practices or choose to follow the ways of the Kin like he father would have. However, in The Jungle the third person point of view makes the reader feel a larger sense of helplessness than Pathologic 2 does. The novel doesn’t allow the reader to change anything written, and readers can only hope that things will change for the better.
Money becomes a common discussion in both the game and the novel. Both handle it in very similar ways. In The Jungle, Jurgis and his family struggle to survive on the little money they have. The biggest moment happens when the family decides to buy a home in Packingtown as opposed to living in the cramped home of Mrs. Jukniene. The family struggled with their choices of where to live because no matter what they’d been spending their precious money on a place to live. The novel says, “…the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month forever they found just as hard to face…he would never rest until the house was paid for and his people had a home” (Sinclair 49). While Jurgis was determined to work as hard as he could to pay off the house and still support his family, the pay that the workers of Packingtown received was barely enough for them to survive. So bad in fact that later on in the novel, Jurgis’s family ends up losing their home once he goes to jail and can no longer afford the rent.
In all games within the Pathologic game series, the concept of money struggle gets represented through the inflation of products due to the trains being cut off. Dialogue between Victor Kain and Daniil Dankovsky about the subject happens on one of the days. Daniil says, “The shops are running out of food as we speak. We must urgently buy the little that’s left. Prices are growing rapidly” (Pathologic: Classic HD). The raising prices become a problem for the player because of the hunger mechanic in the game. If your character becomes too hungry, they can starve to death and make you restart from where you last saved your game. The money that Daniil Dankovsky enters the town with becomes essentially useless, and it increases the game's difficulty immensely. In the article “Scarcity and Survival Horror: Trade as an Instrument of Terror in Pathologic” the author writes, “The positioning of the in-game economy within Pathologic (unstable and unpredictable, yet also essential to the player’s survival) directly feeds into the sense of fear, unease and alienation that the game attempts to evoke for the player…” (Novitz 81). The jump in prices from the first day to the rest of the eleven days really takes first time players by surprise, and seasoned players know when to stock up on food. If money gets too tight, players are forced to sell whatever they have on them. Whether that be items to trade, weapons or even medication to save the sick townsfolk around them.
The Jungle and the Pathologic game series both use money as a way to strike fear into those who don’t have enough. The feeling gets reflected back into the consumer through pathos, and makes them feel more sympathetic towards the main characters. The entire point turns into making the reader so distressed that they take action–whether in real life or in the video game world.
Exploitation occurred constantly throughout the meatpacking plants of the 1900’s. Upton Sinclair highlights this in his novel The Jungle through Jurgis, Marija and Ona. In the novel, Jurgis has been described as a strong man and has a hardworking personality. It was bound that this part of him would be taken advantage of in the stockyards. In the cases of Ona and Marija, they only began to work because of the little money the family had to afford food. Their opinions began to change over the course of the novel. Jurgis begins to notice the effects of the meatpacking plant on others as well. “The vast majority, however, were simply worn-out parts of the great merciless packing-machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could not keep up with it anymore” (Sinclair 119 , The Jungle). After the initial fascination and ease of the stockyards wore off, the true colors of Packingtown began to show. The family–specifically Jurgis–began to realize how unfairly they were being treated. The process of “speeding-up” the production of the meatpacking was made to wear down the workers. Without any rights, it led to circumstances where ex-workers needed to fight for their jobs in the stockyards. In “Processes of Elimination: Progressive-Era Hygienic Ideology, Waste, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle” says, “...becoming a monstrous ‘alimentary machine’ that ingests its workers, extracts and assimilates their labor, and finally excretes their spent bodies” (Duvall 31). Comparing the processes that the workers go through similarly to a digestive track not only brings home the feeling of disgust Sinclair wanted to evoke, but also provides a more human example that can be imaged pretty easily. The workers are just cogs in the great machine, and because there were so many men waiting for a spot in the stockyard that it didn’t matter how many men they lost. It only mattered that they had more men waiting to replace them.
Pathologic has a similar way of displaying the exploitation of meat industry workers through the abuse of the Kin. In Julian Novitz’s article he writes, “The town is repeatedly referred to as a carefully calibrated machine geared towards the production of beef through the countless bulls that are slaughtered in its abattoir. Its social order is strictly divided between the legions of butchers and workers who are segregated in a decrepit slum known as the ‘termitary’...” (“Scarity and Survival Horror: Trade as an Instrument of Terror in Pathologic”, 81). In the games, only members of the Kin are the ones that are kept in the abattoir and termitary. Very few others have access to the inside. Daniil Dankovsky has a conversation with an NPC named Aspity. Aspity isn’t a member of the Kin, but she is accepted by the indigenous group because of her ties to their land. She offers advice to both Townsfolk and members alike. She says to Daniil, “The butcher’s mumbling is all over the place, but if you listen carefully, you’ll make out tales of such horrors that I get shivers all over. Thousands of people have lost their minds all at once there. Many have died…” (Pathologic: Classic HD).
The way she describes what goes on inside the termitary behind closed doors is similar to what Upton Sinclair describes in The Jungle. Despite the Kin technically being the people who owned the land of Gorkhon first, they’re the ones being forced to work in the town’s meat plant murdering bulls so the town can profit. It’s similar to how the immigrants are treated in the novel with the only big difference being where the exploited workers came from. Both groups end up revolting and fighting back against their oppressors.
In conclusion, the video game series Pathologic and the novel The Jungle focus on change and choice throughout their respective stories. They focus on the same topics of tradition, monetary struggles and exploitation but use different narrative styles, points of view and pathos emotions to convey a feeling of helplessness for the person consuming the content. Though done in different ways, both are mainly effective in creating the fear and anxiety they aim to create.
