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Grapes of wrath symbolism
Grapes of wrath symbolism
Grapes of wrath symbolism
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The Bank System in The Grapes of Wrath
The bank system in the 1930’s was a critical detriment to the economy of the United States. The flaws of the bank system in the 1930's leads to negative effects on farmers as shown through the dialogue of landowners and tenants as well as landowners' actions and the author, John Steinbeck's commentary in the novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Examples of negative consequences include: A loss of crops with no source of income, a need to relocate, and a loss of hope and personality. The bank system during the setting of the novel is also a main cause of the Great Depression.
Due to the banks’ greed for money, the landowners were forced to evict tenants and explain to them why, while farmers had to try to beg to
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The land gives them a character, a past and a future. When they lose their property, that personality begins to break down. Steinbeck shows that the land has a spirit, and performing difficult work on that land gives a more profound comprehension of life. The ranchers get astuteness from the land; it assists with their perspectives and basic leadership. The inhumanity of tractors and the unit of landowners upset the ranchers' association with the land. This topic has established in American sentimentalism, as savvy people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau investigated how arrive proprietorship and diligent function compare to freedom (“The Grapes of Wrath - Major Themes” par. 1). “‘Fella gets use' to a place, it's hard to go,’ said Casy” (Steinbeck 51). This quote explains the feelings of not just the Joads, but all farmers because Steinbeck uses farms to connect the people of the depression, as one soul. The farmers have spent their entire lives living on farms and now they are forced to leave and begin anew. "The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do" (Steinbeck 24). Steinbeck uses this line to again symbolize the unification of the people, and that there are no “bad guys” or “good guys”, but that people are just people who make decisions based on their current
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is one of the most influential books in American History, and is considered to be his best work by many. It tells the story of one family’s hardship during the Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The Joads were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness and morals; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. When the big drought came it forced them to sell the land they had lived on before anyone could remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned.
When times get tough, many people turn away from everyone and everything. It must be part of human nature to adopt an independent attitude when faced with troubles. It is understandable because most people do not want to trouble their loved ones when they are going through problems, so it is easier to turn away than stick together. Maybe their family is going through a rough patch and they reason they would be better off on their own. This path of independence and solitude may not always be the best option for them or their family, though. Often times it is more beneficial for everyone to work through the problem together. It is not always the easiest or most desirable option, but most times it is the most efficient and it will get results in the long run. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck makes this point very clear through several characters. Many characters throughout
The opening scene’s setting gives a premise to the overall gloomy and dusty lifestyles of the Okies. The whole time period is already gloomy from the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, but the description of the bland Oklahoma landscape is sad. Steinbeck even wrote about dust like it was an ominous homewrecker. Dust and the wind and the elements in general are given all of the power in this chapter and in future chapters. Such dominant influence of nature suggests the family structure of the Joads and other Okies to be unstable. The environment governs the family, making them move, causing them to seek jobs due to poor land and subsequent lack of work.
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 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck had many comparisons from the movie and the book. In 1939, this story was to have some of the readers against the ones that kept the American people in poverty held responsible for their actions. This unique story was about the Joad’s family, who were migrant workers looking for a good decent job. They were also farmers from Oklahoma that are now striving to find some good work and success for their family in California. This novel was one of Steinbeck’s best work he has ever done. It was in fact an Academy Award movie in 1940. Both the movie and the novel are one of Steinbeck’s greatest masterpieces on both the filmmaking and the novel writing. Both the novel and film are mainly the same in the beginning of the story and towards the end. There were some few main points that Steinbeck took out from the book and didn’t mention them in the movie. “The Grapes of Wrath is a
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...
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck the author uses excessive profanity, religion, and migrants to show the hard times family’s had to go through in the 1930’s. Most people believe that Steinbeck novel is too inappropriate for high school students because of its content. This novel should be banned from the high school curriculum.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John Steinbeck, which focuses on an Oklahoman family that is evicted from their farm during an era of depression caused by the Dust Bowl. The Joad family alongside thousands of other refugees (also affected by the dirty thirties) migrates west towards California seeking employment and a new home. John Steinbeck’s purpose for writing this novel was to inform his audience of how many of their fellow Americans were being mistreated and of the tribulations they faced in order to attain regain what they once had. As a result, The Grapes of Wrath triggered its audience’s sympathy for the plight of the Dust Bowl farmers and their families.
The Grapes of Wrath displays one of America’s greatest stumbles during the establishment of our country. The story follows a family hit with the struggles of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Drought, economic hardship, agricultural changes, and bank foreclosures rip the Joads from the quaint town of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, forcing them to take the dreadful journey across the country. Nevertheless, the Joads drag their feet along the trodden path, dragged on by an unassured perseverance. The Joads were driven by a burning fire of desperation, grounded by the hope promised by orange handbills laden with the deceitful lies of the rapacious. For the hopeless seek hope, an elusive destiny sated by lying promises. Steinbeck’s unique style of writing inculcates an abortive hope in the minds of the readers, instilling a lust for the untouched and unloved land which in turn reveals the impossibility of the “American Dream”; through complex symbols and innovative themes, Steinbeck also educates the ignorant, blinded by the vague history books that blot out the full intensity of the calamities and suffering endured by hopeful Okies on their treacherous journey into the unknown.
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.
There are numerous symbols in The Grapes of Wrath that through analysis provide additional levels of insight and understanding into the novel. These symbols enhance the reader’s overall experience and provide a deeper meaning to the novel. They encourage readers to look beyond the surface to identify parallels in the text that foreshadow future events or represent certain ideas that the author is trying to stress. One of the major symbols of the entire book, is Tom himself. He represents the mental attitude experienced by the migrant families throughout the book. Tom accurately represents the hope burning inside of every migrant. As we learn about Tom throughout the novel, we come to know of the murder that he committed. Although it may not have been completely intentional, he is still forced to abandon his family. When he reunites with his family, he is immediately accepted back into their family, and he joins them as they begin to embark on their journey to California. He is with them every step of the way to California on Route 66 and constantly encourages them to persevere even through the difficult times. While in California, history is repeated, and Tom kills yet another man out of anger. He is forced to hide away and is of no use to the family anymore as he can no longer work. Later, he is forced to abandon his family yet again. This all directly correlates to the hope found in every migrant. It all began in Oklahoma, where hope hurt farmers during the Dust Bowl. After the hope had hurt them, it abandoned them. A quote in Chapter 1 of The Grapes of Wrath represents this, “The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring sense out to see whether men and women would break...
“Everybody wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but its jus' in their head.” (Steinbeck) The Grapes of Wrath is most often categorized as an American Realist novel. It was written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. As a result of this novel, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and prominently cited the novel when he won the Nobel Prize a little over twenty years after the text’s publication. This text follows the Joad family through the Great Depression. It begins in Oklahoma, watching as the family is driven from their home by drought and economic changes. Within the introduction of the novel the living conditions is described, “Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: The walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it.” (Grapes, 1) This novel is and will remain one of the most significant novels of the Great Depression. Despite its controversial nature it is timeless. In fact, the ending of this text is one of the most controversial pieces of literature written during the time period, and has never accurately made its way into film. The ending to John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is the most significant portion of the novel due to its historical accuracy as well as its message about the American spirit.
Thousand of families flooded to California just so they could feed their families, but by showing the treatment the landowners show to these families, or lack thereof, Steinbeck points to the fact that they don't even plan on letting them eat, and that money is the only thing they're really worrying about. When explaining to his family that Jim Casy had gone on strike because of the poor wages, Tom says, "Yeah. What we was a-doin' was breakin' strike. They give them fellas two an' a half cents." Pa responds, "You can't eat on that." When their outlook gets so desperate, the first priority is to feed their families and hope for better times. By showing these small, seemingly insignificant, noble acts, Steinbeck shows the determination of these families to press on. The poor wages set by the landowners show that they, the landowners, care nothing for the families even in their destitution. With such low wages set, the landowners are alienating these poor families and giving reason for hostilities. This form of alienation demonstrates that these landowners plan on keeping every penny they possible can. With lower wages paid to more workers, things get done quicker while the rich can keep their pockets lined.
Steinbeck inclines to unravel the plight of two migrant workers with a dream to purchase their own land in the future, where they plan to rear rabbits and keep livestock. As reality dawns on the two men, their lifestyle proves not to be as easy as they think. George states, “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some oth...
The crops eventually fell and “the owners of the land came onto the land” (Steinbeck 31). The Oklahoma families are forced to leave the land that they lived on for generations. There isn’t any negotiating. It was either flee or die of ...