Know to be one of the worst man made disasters of all time, the Dust Bull of 1930 caused thousands of families to starve as they searched for a new home. This event's occurrence was not a coincidence, but rather happened because of poor farming habits. The crops would suck all the nutrients out of the ground leaving a light layer of dirt on top. This dirt was then blown into the air thus creating the Dust Bull. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a novel, which portrays a poor farming family named the Joads. The Joads, just like all the other farmers, were not able to pay the banks that owned their land. As the farmers were kicked off their beloved land they were forced to look for jobs and new land, but this would be much harder than …show more content…
The Joads moved across the country towards California. As they went through the state of Arizona, they pulled off the side of the road towards a river. As the men were floating in the river, two more men came up and joined them. As the men got to talking, the topic of California came up. He told the Joads that “‘She's a nice country. But she was stole a long time ago...You never seen such purty country-all orchards an' grapes, purtiest country you ever seen. An' you'll pass lan' flat an' fine with water thirty feet down, and that lan's layin' fallow. But you can't have non of that lan'. That's a Lan' and Cattle Company’”(279). The men the Joads are talking to are explaining how the large corporations and businesses own all of the land in California. Even though all the land in California is not being used, it still can’t be farmed on by all the farmers. Steinbeck uses the word “stole[en]” to describe the land in California. By using this word he is criticizing the large corporations for taking all the land. They didn’t just take any normal land but the “purty country” full of “orchards” and “grapes”. This imagery reveals how fertile and luscious California is. Describing California in this way, demonstrates how all the people there should be thriving, while instead they are living in slums and starving to death. According to this passage the farmers should have food to spare, but because of the large industries this is not the case. So ultimately, Steinbeck is critiquing capitalism. First, he shows how the family farmers, which are the majority of the population, can’t make a living any more. Next, he demonstrates that when the power is in the hands of the few rich corporations, the majority of the population is starving without jobs. Steinbeck uses the poor farming families to demonstrate the terrible side of our
The Grapes of Wrath explicates on the Dust Bowl era as the reader follows the story of the Joads in the narrative chapters, and the migrants in expository chapters. Steinbeck creates an urgent tone by using repetition many times throughout the book. He also tries to focus readers on how the Dust Bowl threatened migrant dreams using powerful imagery. As well as that, he creates symbols to teach the upper class how the Dust Bowl crushed the people’s goals. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck utilizes imagery, symbolism, and repetition to demonstrate how the Dust Bowl threatened the “American Dream.”
Steinbeck meets his standard by celebrating the migrant workers’ drive and sense of community in the face of the Great Depression. The Joad family and many others, are dedicated to conquering all odds: “[t]hus they changed their social life–changed as in the whole universe only man can change” (Steinbeck 196). There are no other options available for these tenant families than to take the trek to California in hopes of finding work. The fears they once had about droughts and floods now lingered with
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
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.
Grapes of Wrath. In the beginning of the novel The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads are faced with the challenge of traveling Route 66 all the way to California. This is their solution to being tractored off their land and having no way to support the large family. This challenge is similar to the depression of 1929, when many people lost their jobs, homes, and their whole lives.
Through his use of imagery, phrases like “did not try anymore” and words like hard, crust, and pale paints a picture of an open dry unpromising field filled with dying crops. This mental image created by Steinbeck’s words evokes unpleasant emotion: before the audience is even introduced to the main characters John Steinbeck has already made his audience empathize with the character’s situation. “Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often, And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men -- to feel whether this time the men would break.” This drought left the farmers with nothing to do but stare at their dying crops, thinking of how their families will make it. Meanwhile, the wives and children were worried about the men in their lives and their lack of resources. “After a while the faces of the
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
John Steinbeck used a lot of different styles in The Grapes of Wrath. He liked using language that was in keeping with his characters. He was also really big on symbolism. Steinbeck also used intercalary chapters to provide some of the background information.
In paragraph twenty-five, he consecutively asked questions that brought the entire passage together. By saying, “Is it possible that this state is so stupid, so vicious and so greedy that it cannot feed and clothe the men and women who help to make it the richest area in the world?” the reader's immediate reaction would be yes! They would ask themselves why would the government want those many people to suffer? Why won’t help reach those seriously ill until it’s too late? This not only brings more questions to the imagination but a sense of emotion towards those who struggle daily. His final question in this article suggests that no issue has been in the process of being solved until enough is enough. “Must the hunger become anger and the anger become fury before anything will be done?” Again, we internally answer in the way Steinbeck had intended giving more of an upper-hand on his argument, the government is responsible for the well-being of the
The major topic on both authors talk about is the government. They both refer to the American government. In Steinbeck’s case they manipulate the farmers to go away for their own profit while the farmers receive nothing. For instance, the government is described as a, “monster,” to the people for evicting the families for enough profit out of them (Steinbeck 43). Here the
...however, feels that to solve the plight of the Okies, land should be set aside for them to start their own small farms, since farming is all they know. He also suggests that local committees set wages and labor needs before the harvests to protect the rights of the workers and prevent them from being extorted (Pgs 58-59). While Steinbeck’s ideas made sense and had good intent, the grim reality still remained that the corporations controlled the agriculture industry and that they were going to save every nickel and dime they could, even if it meant a lower standard of living for the Okie. Today, we have unions that attempt to prevent things like this from happening again, but the plight of illegal immigrants demonstrates that the reality of this country’s need for cheap labor remains.
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.
The dust bowl is a severe drought with dust-winds experienced by the United States during the 1930s(Schubert). Many families had fled to the west for better job opportunities and life style. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath describes Joad’s family, similar to many others, suffered from the dust bowl and tries to get to the California, as well as how capitalist is the enemy and the society can be saved by socialism. He describes the Joad’s family to be in Oklahoma, causing them to lose their job and be dehumanized; uneducated, resulting them to have difficulties when finding jobs; and proletarian, making them to have less social right and wealth, to show how their identity is shaped by the bourgeoisie class, preventing
One final contradiction that Steinbeck uses in his essay that I have personally witnessed is, "In no country are more seeds and plants and equipment purchased, and less vegetables and flowers raised." It seems like every other week my neighbor two houses down brings home bags of seeds for plants, trees, fruits, and vegetables, yet their back yard still looks like all they plant are weeds. They even hire landscapers to come and work on their yard.
Steinbeck criticizes capitalism by portraying the banks and companies as insensitive monsters who, for the sake of profit, heartlessly force the farmers off their lands. When the Dust Bowl hits, the small farmers lose profit and could barely survive on the little they have, but since the bank “has to have profit all the time,” it callously forces the farmers off their land (pg 42). Capitalism, built on the idea of making profit, gets rid of anything that hinders financial gain. The bank could have a...