The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is most often perceived as a depressing that enumerates the many failings of humans during the Great Depression and in general society. Daniel Joseph Singal agrees with this viewpoint, but with a twist. In his essay “Towards a Definition of American Modernism”, Singal shares how Steinbeck also has a message of hope contained within his story of hardship. Through the dreams a Ma and Rose of Sharon Joad, Steinbeck cautions readers on the action of dreaming, because one’s fantasies do not always turn into an expected reality.
In the novel, Ma demonstrates the virtues of being a careful dreamer in the Joad family, since her abstinence from over-hope serves her well in the end. The Joads are introduced as getting ready to go to California for work. The family buzzes with excitement, idealizing California’s beauty and goodness. Ma is glad that her family has a hope of surviving the Great Depression, but at the same time, she is “scared of somepin so nice. [She] ain’t got faith. [She’s] scared that somepin ain’t so nice about it” (Steinbeck 91) Ma is c...
Misfit to Madonna: Rose of Sharon’s Transformation When Rose of Sharon is first introduced in The Grapes of Wrath, we learn that she is expecting a child from her new husband, Connie Rivers. She is described as a mystical being whose primary concern is the well-being of her child, even at the almost ridiculously early stage of her pregnancy at the start of the novel. It is this concern that illustrates Rose of Sharon’s transformation from misfit to Madonna through the Joad’s journey. Rose of Sharon incessantly asks Ma Joad if “it’ll hurt the baby” throughout the majority of the novel, and adopts an attitude of superiority over others with her precious possession. She all but refuses to help the family pack the truck for California for fear of disturbing her fetus, even though she knows her help is needed.
To begin, the novel highlights how important family is to the Joad’s. The Joad’s are a farming family, who have lived on their farm land for as long as many of them can remember. Unfortunately due to the Great Depression, the Landowners are forced to make the majority of the families living on their land leave, including the Joad’s The novel begins
John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. He had a pretty average childhood with a supportive family and a decent education. While growing up his mother, Olive Hamilton, was a major factor in his education, since she was a schoolteacher and made it her duty to educate him. His mother most likely was the reason he developed a love of reading and literature and ended up going to Stanford. In his child there were only two major events that affected his writing. These were when he worked on a ranch with migrant workers, and when his father’s business failed and the family was temporarily thrust into poverty. These two events most likely sparked his interest in the poor lives of the migrant workers. His experiences on the ranch taught him about the harsh and impoverished lives of the migrant workers and his experience of being in poverty enabled him to understand what life is like when one is poor, as the migrant workers were. This understanding inspired some of his most famous writings such as: Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath. These experiences also allowed him to add a sense of realism to the stories. After graduating from his public high school in 1919 Steinbeck went to Stanford. He went there for 5 years before dropping out without a degree and moving to New York. The following years were highly tumultuous for Steinbeck and he held many odd jobs while trying to get his writing published. In 1935 he finally got his first big break when his critically acclaimed novel, Tortilla Flats, was published. After this he became quite successful and well known although the skill in his writing seems to fall after WWII. After researching his life I decided to focus on using his most famous n...
A popular literary technique that can be found in a number of literary works is the biblical allusion. John Steinbeck perfects this technique in his novel The Grapes of Wrath by introducing a character who is symbolic of Jesus Christ. This character, Jim Casy, not only shares initials with this biblical figure, but he also grows thoughout the novel as a speaker, a mediator, an organizer, and, most remarkably, a martyr.
Having watched the movie "Grapes of Wrath", I have been given the opportunity to see the troubles that would have befell migrant workers during the Great Depression. Though the Joads were a fictitious family, I was able to identify with many signs of hope that they could hold onto. Some of these families who made the journey in real life carried on when all they had was hope. The three major signs of hope which I discovered were, overcoming adversity, finding jobs, and completing the journey.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck presents the reader with a series of vivid images, accompanied by a series of powerful indictments. Steinbeck effectively uses both the potent imagery and clear statements of what he perceives as fact to convey his message. This short chapter offers a succinct portrayal of one of the major themes of the larger work. Namely, the potential bounty of nature corrupted and left to rot by a profit-driven system, a system that ultimately fails.
John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath in response to the Great Depression. Steinbeck's intentions were to publicize the movements of a fictional family affected by the Dust Bowl that was forced to move from their homestead. Also a purpose of Steinbeck's was to criticize the hard realities of a dichotomized American society.
John Steinbeck sets his novel The Grapes of Wrath during the Depression of the 1930's. Universal archetypes play a significant role in Steinbeck’s story. Steinbeck creates a cast of characters whose archetypes can be easily related to. The Earthmother, haven versus hell, and the evil figure with the ultimately good heart are archetypes described in The Grapes of Wrath to show the bad and good times during a time of hardships.
Of all the archetypes of American literature, none presents such radically evolved ideas as the Modernism movement. Its overarching concepts remain in flux and provide contrasting glimpses of multitudes of topics; however, just as many of its central tenets remain unchanged between novels, years, and the digression from form that humanity’s modern culture condones. The ideas and concepts that John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald put forth in their novels, The Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby, are not exceptions. Specifically, the theme of love across social classes shines through both novels, exhibited in the ineffable drive to lend oneself to another person of a lower class deserving of help.
Clearly, Ma was well aware that if she had shown her feelings of distress or fear, it would have affected her family negatively. As Steinbeck writes, “And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself” (74). Thereupon, Ma bore her feelings of fear and grief alone, a great example of her love for her family. Since they had lost their farm and were making plans to move to California, it would have been disastrous for them if Ma had sat around feeling sorry for herself after losing her home. Instead, Ma showed enthusiasm and a positive attitude because she knew that they needed it. Steinbeck continues to write, “She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken” (74). Ma was the stronghold or the fortress for her family. If the fortress crumbled, the family would fall. Ma loved her family and saw to it that they were constantly happy. Again, Steinbeck writes, “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” (74). For example, let’s compare the Joad family to a book. Ma Joad is the spine, old Tom Joad the cover, and the children are the pages. Once the spine of the book tears away, then
In John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family and the changing world in which they live is portrayed from a naturalistic point of view. Steinbeck characterizes the Joads and their fellow migrants as simple, instinct-bound creatures who are on an endless search for paradise (Owens 129). The migrants and the powers which force them to make their journey--nature and society--are frequently represented by animals. The Joads, when they initially leave home, are a group of simplistic, animal-like people who barely understand or even realize their plight, but as the story progresses, they begin to grow and adapt to their new circumstances. They evolve from a small, insignificant group of creatures with no societal consciousness into a single member of a much larger family--society.
Spangler, Jason. “We’re on a Road to Nowhere: Steinbeck, Kerouac, and the Legacy of the Great Depression” Studies in the Novel Vol. 40, No. 3 (Fall 2008): 308-327. JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2014.
The Joad family members are the type of people that would do anything to help out someone in need of help, they are tough people, they do not rely on much just there family, they notice that they were farm people not the people they are turning into (Steinbeck 317).
In 2008, Rudra Sabaratnam, the CEO of the City of Angels Medical Center, committed health care fraud when he attempted to extort money from Medicare and Medi-Cal. He was wealthy, yet, his greed for more money led him to cheat the taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars, depriving the people who actually need the help and money. The greed that Sabaratnam had was partly caused by the profit seeking capitalist system. The desire for wealth in capitalist society leads to corruption and causes a divide between the rich and the poor, so perhaps a system that supports equality and fairness is a better choice. The Eastern-European expression,“Capitalism is man exploiting man; communism is just the opposite,” summarizes one of the main ideas in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s aversion to a capitalist society is a motif that appears in several of his literary works, but in The Grapes of Wrath he attacks capitalism constantly and he exposes the poverty, cruelty, and greed found in our capitalist system. By emphasizing the wealthy’s insatiable appetite for profit, which forces the migrants to face hardships, Steinbeck accentuates the inequitable aspects of capitalism, and promotes communism as an alternative.