Title: Grapes of Wrath
Author: John Steinbeck
Length: 455
Historical Background: Throughout the 1930’s, a significant drought hit the mid west and practically destroyed the agriculture market. This near natural disaster was called the “Dust Bowl.” The economic crash for farmers caused many to lose their houses and farms and this forced them to move westward in search of opportunity.
Biographical Information: John Steinbeck lived with an Oklahoman family who was travelling westward. This prepared him greatly to write this novel accurately and from firsthand experience. John Steinbeck is originally from Salinas Valley, California, and his economic troubles throughout his younger life fueled his passion in writing novels with a setting in the period of the Great Depression.
Characteristics of the Genre: The genre of Grapes of Wrath was historical fiction. Historical fiction contains a fictional story, but based on the structure of events in history that really happened. For example, the Dust Bowl really happened in history but Tom Joad probably was not a real man.
Plot Summary: A man, Tom Joad, is released from prison and returns home to find his family’s farm and all other nearby farms deserted. After finding his family he finds out they are planning to travel west to try to earn money picking fruit in California. It is a long and challenging road to travel in a weak, old pickup truck, for both Grampa Joad and a woman by the name of Sairy Wilson cannot complete the journey. California is not all the glamour they had expected because California has an enormous shortage of jobs. To make matters worse, Granma Joad dies. The family moves around looking for work, and unfortunately two of the older boys abandon the family out of frustra...
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...ormation to a character who is ready to fight for what he believes is right.
“’Let ‘em come,’ she said. ‘We got a-plenty.’” (Steinbeck 73). Although short, this quote is a strong statement of Ma Joad’s attitude and strength as a leader to accept people and keep them together because they really did not have plenty, but she was willing to take new people in regardless.
Opening Scene: The opening scene of the novel shows Tom Joad getting out of prison and finding his farm deserted and all other farms in the area deserted. This shows just how devastating an effect the Dust Bowl had on farmers and their families and how many lives were altered.
Closing Scene: The closing scene of the novel had a huge effect because Rose of Sharon was bringing back to life a man with the same breast milk that would have fed her new born baby. This promotes second chances and new life.
Steinbeck describes Ma as a strong woman, physically “heavy, thick with childbearing and work” (Chap.8). From the moment the author introduces her to the reader, she displays two qualities that remain throughout the book: generosity and self-control. Her first word aims to welcome stranger at the family table (“Let’em come”).
Rose of Sharon is a character that is most directly related to the Bible. Her name in found in the Song of Solomon, “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” (Ganticles, 7:7). Most of Rose of Sharon’s parallels to the Bible take place in the last chapter of the novel. After the birth of her stillborn baby she nourishes a starving man with her milk. This is symbol...
The Joad’s were facing many conflicts and in the process of losing their house. They heard there was going to be work in California and wanted to take the risk and move out there to find a job to provide. The Dust Bowl and The Great Depression were pretty huge topics in history and the novel about The Grapes of Wrath had some pretty raw details about their journey and similar to both histories. The Joad family pushed each other to have a better life in California and did everything they could to have a job to provide and eat, and mainly survive to live another day. In the novel, the beginning, the Joad family faced and struggled with nature, dust nature, just like the people that experienced this during the Dust Bowl. The people in the Southern plains dealt with a huge dust storm and the Joad family were also faced with this storm but struggled from these dust storms because of no work. No work means you can’t eat and
In the end when Tom leaves, the book discards the only other main character to focus on Ma. A man made the first decision of the book and a woman ends up making the final decision by telling Rose of Sharon to offer a dying man breast
One of America’s most beloved books is John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The book portrays a family, the Joads, who leave Oklahoma and move to California in search of a more prosperous life. Steinbeck’s book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and government policies.
The novel closes with Rosa of Sharon offering her dead baby’s breast milk to a
Wainwright stops to help the Joad family when they are in dire need of it. Mrs. Wainwright is the Joad’s boxcar neighbor at one of the many camps they live in. At this certain time, Rose of Sharon is expecting and is getting weak to the point of where her legs give out from under her. Mrs. Wainwright helps the Joad family in many ways; one being she helped deliver Rose of Sharon’s baby. “I he’ped with lots.” (440) she helped Rose of Sharon and Ma, without her the labor would have been sufficiently more painful. Without the help of others, the Joad’s (FINISH CONCLUDING
Recently released from prison. Tom Joad hitchhikes to his hometown in Oklahoma and meets up with Reverend Casy who has ideological beliefs that inspire Tom. After Tom reunites with his family, he learns that the Joads were evicted and plan to migrate to California where supposedly there are good wages, jobs, and land. Everyone optimistically gets into an shabby car for the journey to CA, but along the way, Grandpa and Grandma died. The family arrives at a shantytown and meets other desperate travellers who warn that CA is not as bounteous as newspapers say. The men’s advice was correct because upon arriving at a migrant worker camp in CA, the Joads learn that there are jobs or food available. A scuffle breaks out, so the Joads hastily drive to
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
The drought caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor of the Dust bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that
The ending of The Grapes of Wrath maintains its historical accuracy by enforcing the idea of the women being the force that holds the family together. From even the beginning of this text we can see that Ma Joad is an incredibly strong ch...
Because of the devastating disaster of the dust bowl, the Joad family was forced to leave their long-time home and find work and a new life elsewhere. They, like many other families, moved to California. "The land of milk and honey". The people in the dust bowl imagined California as a haven of jobs where they would have a nice little white house and as much fruit as they could eat. This dream was far from the reality the migrant farmers faced once in California. The dreams, hopes, and expectations the Joads had of California were crushed by the reality of the actual situation in this land of hate and prejudice.
The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive. This created what is known as the Dust Bowl Migration. During the 1930’s and 1940’s these people decided to travel west to California in search of work. However, they did not receive the welcoming they might have
As the Joad family faces the same trials that the turtle faces, and as the desperate farmers have to deal with car dealerships, the intercalary chapters help to set the tone of, as well as integrate the various themes of The
Although both the novel and movie form of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath are considered to be American classics, the novel provides a deeper understanding of the story's time and meaning. Absent from the film, the novel's interchapters provide a greater understanding of the time in which The Grapes of Wrath takes place. First, in the movie it is unclear why the Joads are forced to abandon their farm. It is described very briefly by Muley Graves, leaving the audience in a state of confusion. However, in the novel, Chapter 5 explains exactly why the farmers are forced to leave. In this interchapter, Steinbeck uses a dialogue between a farmer and a representative from a bank; the farmer is forced to leave because the bank, or the"Monster" as Steinbeck says, needs to make a profit, and if the farmer cannot produce any goods to pay off debts, then the bank forecloses the land. This happened to many farmers in the 1930's due to a dr...