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The grapes of wrath descriptive essay
The grapes of wrath themes
An essay for the grapes of wrath
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When the novel begins, Tom Joad, the protagonist of the story has just been released from the state prison in Oklahoma. He makes his way home to his family to find that the area has been deserted with everyone being “tractored” off the land. Most families, including Tom’s are headed to California in search of new work and new lives. Tom finds his family and they decide to take a huge risk by giving up the land they’ve been tethered to for generations. This uprooting of their family begins a long, slow change in identity for many family members as well as family dynamics and structure. Before, the Joad family relied on a traditional family structure in which the men worked outside of the house and made the decisions while the women obediently did as they were told and tended to the house and raising of children. An example that shows how invested are they in these roles is how everyone continues to honor the grandfather as the head of the family despite the fact that he has outlived his ability to act as a sound leader, becoming just another person to feed and care for. Many will hold to a tradition family structure even in times of duress and pressure because it gives them comfort. Some families have a hard time being flexible and research has shown that allowing you and others room to change and adapt can be very healthy. (Price & Price, 2005) As the Joads continue their journey westward in an attempt to find work in California, however, the family dynamic changes quite a bit. Pa becomes discouraged and begins to feel defeat by his growing failures. He eventually withdraws in his role as family leader and ends up being overwhelmed in a sort of identity crisis. The painful loss of personal identity is a common theme of human exis... ... middle of paper ... ... the world, but that one can gain “wholeness” only by devoting oneself to your fellow human beings. He matures under stress and commits to bettering the future for himself and his family. After seeing so much injustice, he finally realizes that “his” people are all people. He cannot stand working for his family’s well-being if it means taking work from another family. He ends up leaving his family to set out on a course of public action. With his rational, calm temperament, it’s no wonder he handles such inhumane treatment so well. I would speculate that he would become an effective political leader if there were to be a sequel to the story. Overall, this is a story that is completely focused on what it means to be a family, what humans need to survive, and the idea of human weakness in self-interest. Families are truly the bedrock of not only society, but humanity.
New beginnings and new land, while made out to seem as beacons of hope and chances for prosperity, are complete opposites; new beginnings offer neither success nor happiness, but rather more failures and recurring sorrows. John Steinbeck and Jack Hodgins introduce the idea of new beginnings and settlements just as they emphasize the importance of togetherness as a community and a family in The Grapes of Wrath and Broken Ground. However, it is important to consider that these new beginnings were involuntary and rather forced due to situational circumstances. These circumstances caused drastic changes in the lives of the characters, changes that ultimately led them towards a downward spiral. In both novels, change in location helped advertise new beginnings as a chance for a new, improved lifestyle, which turned out to be a mere lie. The “promised land” was simply a hoax, which they would later realize, as it left them with nothing more than the broken pieces of their woven dreams.
The novel uses immigrant labor to form its foundation for the story and then recounts personal memories from Jim’s life about the immigrants to show the hardships they face coming into a new world for the first time.
Initially, the Joad's focus is on their own immediate family and their struggle to stay together. The individual family members appear to have specific roles. Mr. Joad, as was typical of the time and area, is the decision maker and the head of the family. Mrs. Joad, the emotional leader of the family, is the real strength and she recognizes her position. "She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone." (Pg. 80)
As the Joads and other families embark on their journey to California they are faced with different people who try to exploit them. They meet crooked car salesmen who try to sell them horrible cars for an unreasonable price for the current condition of the car. However because they had no knowledge of car selection they paid those unreasonable prices in order to get a car that takes them to California. They would replace new batteries with broken batteries after the car was sold so in order for themselves to make even more money of of the people who bought the cars. They would take the husbands away so that thei...
Through the roughest times in life, we come across crises that reveal the true character in those around us. Those who are strong are divided from the weak and the followers divide from the leaders. In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck presents the character Ma Joad who serves an important role as the rock that keeps the family together. The Joad family, apart from many families in Oklahoma, is forced to leave their homes in search of work and better opportunities; California not only leaves them in poverty but despair. But through it all Ma Joad is the leader of the family that exhibits selflessness in order to protect and secure her family.
The Joads, after they are forced to vacate their farm in Oklahoma, decide to pack all of their belongings and make the voyage to California, where there is supposedly so much work that everyone can make a living. But along the way, they quickly run into trouble. They have little money, an unreliable vehicle, a truckload of people to feed, and miles to go before they reach their destination. The Joads quickly discover something that becomes a major theme throughout the book: cooperating with others to achieve a common goal is sometimes necessary for surviva...
The protagonist of this story is Tom Joad. Tom must overcome several conflicts when he is paroled from jail and let out into an economically depressed country. Tom's physical conflict throughout the novel is the task of surviving the horrible starving conditions of America's Great Depression. He also has physical conflicts with people who only wish to destroy the hopes of migrant workers such as the police and strikebreakers. Tom's emotional conflict deals with his inability to get good work and take care of his family. Tom had feelings of worthlessness until he decided to run away and attempt to organize the migrant workers against the wealthy California landowners with inspiration from his close friend Jim Casey. Tom becomes a character with much moral integrity, and devotes himself to the lives of his fellow migrant workers. The main conflict is basically shown in a battle of good vs. evil. As the novel progresses it becomes more evident that the migrant workers must band together in order to survive against the wealthy and greedy landowners. Ma Joad said that survival is the ultimate principal and it is also the ultimate conflict of Grapes of Wrath.
On the way to California, the Joad's encountered other people that had already been to California and were now returning. One of these encounters, with the ragged man with the sunburned face, is described on page 242. The ragged man had children that died because wages were too low and work was too scarce to afford food for his children and wife. His story was one of pain and despair and was evidence of the cruel and inhumane treatment which resulted from the California farmers prejudice towards the migrant workers.
The movie is all about the Joad family and their pursuit to find the American dream. They are a very poor family who lives during the great depression. They decide to leave their home that gets demolished and move to California in order to hopefully get some work, make some money, and eventually one day own land of their own again. The main themes of this movie were the pursuit of the American dream, and how it can be completely different depending on the people. The Joad family when compared to Jay Gatsby or The Buchanan family. They did not want everything, they just wanted to be fed and have a place to call their
The family had to find other means of creating income. Tom Joad and his family faced many tragedies throughout their journey to California, including several family deaths and cruelty from all of the California Natives. As the Joad family was nearing California they were in need of money. They came across a businessman, which they sold all of the belongings from the farm that they could spare. The Joads were not familiar with the way people did business in the west, the businessman knew that and took full advantage of it. The narrator explained, “and the men in the seat were tired and angry and sad, for they had got eighteen dollars for every movable thing from the farm: the horses, the wagon, the implements, and all the furniture from the house. Eighteen dollars. They had assailed the buyer, argued; but they were routed when his interest seemed to flag and he had told them he didn’t want the stuff at any price. Then they were beaten, believed him, and took two dollars less than he had first offered. And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them.” The men knew that their belongings were worth more but had never seen business done like that, the businessman took full advantage of them and their money. Thereafter, the family is getting closer to California and
Tom Joad is an ex-convict that was only into his own self-interest and lived by a mantra of live your life day by day and not concerned with the future, to becoming a man who thinks about the future and someone with morals and an obligation to help others. Ma Joad is a typical woman of the early 1900’s whose main role was a mother only with a role of caring and nurturing. Later in the novel, she becomes an important figure for the family and is responsible for making decisions in keeping the family together and emphasizes the importance of unity. Another important transition in the book is the family starting off as a single close knit unit to depending on other families to survive. This common interest and struggle bonded the community of individual families to a single one. Steinbeck wrote this novel very well, by having great character dynamics and development that displays the characters strengths and also their
The book's entire plot centers around a forced exodus. Regardless of one’s views on Naturalism, it is nearly indisputable that the Joads’ impetus for exodus was economic forces beyond the Joads' control. The family is repeatedly oppressed by the powers that be: the faceless bank, the clerks at the roadside, the owners and operators of the farms, and the police. A sense of impersonality and inhumanity dominate the description of the banks, and as such the entire economic system that perpetuates it. When the dispossessed and downtrodden farmer as...
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
The first and most obvious conflict the Joad family faces in the beginning of the novel is the ongoing struggle with nature. Beginning the novel is a description of the "Dust Bowl" and the families trying to work the land and make a living. The Joad family's home and land is taken away because they cannot grow any crop during the drought and are forced from their home by the bank. This is when they decide to move west to California and find work and a better life there.
The story is told through the eyes of seven year old Luke Chandler. Luke lives with his parents and grandparents on their rented farmland in the lowlands of Arkansas. It takes place during the harvest season for cotton in 1952. Like other cotton growers, these were hard times for the Chandlers. Their simple lives reached their zenith each year with the task of picking cotton. It’s more than any family can complete by themselves. In order to harvest the crops and get paid, the Chandlers must find cotton pickers to help get the crops to the cotton gin. In order to persevere, they must depend on others. They find two sets of migrant farm workers to assist them with their efforts: the Mexicans, and the Spruills - a family from the Arkansas hills that pick cotton for others each year. In reading the book, the reader learns quickly that l...