THE GRAPES OF WRATH
The 1930’s brought about great changes to some families of Oklahoma causing them to have to change their way of living. The drought and the overused farm land causing the crops to dry up and die make it hard to make a living. The Dust Bowl brings great winds creating great storms of dust making life miserable and unbearable. John Steinbeck makes a link between the atmosphere and the Dust Bowl in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. The atmosphere concerning not just the land but the people as well is the focus of the essay at hand. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck uses the harsh conditions of the farm land in Oklahoma, the attitudes of the people, and the life changes the people have to make to create a novel that lets the reader view the hard times for some families in the 1930’s.
To being, the harsh conditions of the land bring about turmoil for the Oklahoma farmers in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. In the 1930’s some of the Oklahoma farmers were sharecroppers. A sharecropper is a farmer who raises crops for the owner of a piece of land and is paid a portion of
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the money from the sale of the crops. The Grapes of Wrath portray Oklahoma farmers struggling with the corn crops because of the overworked land, and the hot, dry conditions of the area. In Steinbeck’s novel he shows us that drought is setting in, “the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth…The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more…The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country” (Steinbeck, 3). In another example Steinbeck describes the Dust Bowl effect, “The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves, and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields…Men and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes” (5). The farmers’ lives begin to take a turn for the worse due to the struggles brought on by the drought causing the harsh conditions of the land. The crops dry up and die creating no income for the owner of the land and in turn no income for the farmers. Secondly, the attitude of the people dry up like the land making life difficult for others.
The owners of the land decide they will no longer allow the sharecroppers to live on their lands. The sharecroppers are left with no place to live and no way of making any money. The Grapes of Wrath shows us the reaction of one of the sharecroppers as he is being told that he will no longer be allowed to stay. “…but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it…” (45). The tenants don’t have a choice. Their lives are changing due to the actions and attitudes of other men. The land is no longer available to the tenants. It belongs to the owners and they can do with it what they
will. Lastly, the sharecroppers or tenants make life changes in order to make a living any way they can. Some families set off on the road heading west with everything they have left. Some things were sold in order to get money for the move. Steinbeck shows us the how changes affect the tenants. “In the little houses the tenant people sifted their belongings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers. Picked over their possessions for the journey to the west…Harness, carts, seeders, little bundles of hoes. Bring ‘em out. Pile ‘em up. Load ‘em in the wagon. Take ‘em to town. Sell ‘em for what you can get. Sell the team and the wagon, too. No more use for anything” (117). Big families moving together to work and live. The men would find work doing whatever they could find along the way. Families traveling Route 66 in long lines of vehicles to get to the intended destination. Along the way many facing hardships such as death and hunger. Families meeting other families trying to survive together. In conclusion, John Steinbeck shows the reader how the harsh conditions of the farm land in Oklahoma, the attitudes of the people, and the life changes people make to endure this terrible time. Steinbeck draws a link to his novel with the atmosphere and the Dust Bowel conditions. This novel brings the reader into the lives of any families affected during this harsh time of history. Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath has proven to be a work that has stood the test of time.
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.”
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
This passage implies that George and Lennie, the fictional characters of Steinbeck's novel, lived in relative comfort as they worked the farm. If one compares this to a similar passage from The Harvest Gypsies:
Throughout the novel, The Grapes of Wrath there are intercalary chapters. The purpose of these chapters are to give the readers insight and background on the setting, time, place and even history of the novel. They help blend the themes, symbols, motifs of the novel, such as the saving power of family and fellowship, man’s inhumanity to man, and even the multiplying effects of selfishness. These chapters show the social and economic crisis flooding the nation at the time, and the plight of the American farmer becoming difficult. The contrast between these chapters helps readers look at not just the storyline of the Joad family, but farmers during the time and also the condition of America during the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses these chapters to show that the story is not only limited to the Joad family,
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.
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.
Throughout history, less fortunate people have been set apart or shunned from the general public. In the Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, this statement holds true. Throughout the whole book, all of the less fortunate people are treated like they aren’t even human. This is not much different than how our society is now. In the news article “Major Cities Get Tough With Homeless”, by Angie Cannon, Judy Appel said, “We are saying it is your fault that we have created a structure where there aren’t enough jobs and housing for you to lead a decent life.” (Cannon 1) Appel is saying the same thing Steinbeck was saying in his book. Many homeless people are homeless because they were forced to be that way, and the general public doesn’t realize it.
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.
“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.
In the beginning of the novel, Steinbeck describes the devastating Dust bowl that settles “on the corn, on roofs,” and blankets “the weeds and trees” (Steinbeck 3). His use of imagery instantly installs the picture of destruction into the reader’s mind. The Dust Bowl is the beginning of the hardships that are to come for the migrants. There is an anecdote of a turtle who struggles to get to the other side of the road. The turtle struggles up the embankment like the families struggled to get to California. When he was trying to cross the highway he was nearly hit twice, which is similar to the business owners and Californians running over the Oklahoma people. This small chapter symbolizes the entire journey of the Joad family, in turn it symbolizes the journey of all the Oklahoma people. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
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.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.
The book The Grapes of Wrath focuses on a particular section of America called the "Dust Bowl" during the early nineteen thirties. During this time, when tenant farming was a way of life for so many Oklahomans, there came a drought which drastically cut down production of crops and forced the bank to evict the tenants in order to cut losses. The problem may seem straightforward at first, and maybe it is, but the cause of the problem should not be simplified. Naturally, the three participants in this disaster, the tenants, the bank and the workers, have their own separate, and logical, points of view. Who is right? In the larger picture, events occurring during this time period involving banks and corporations are primitive examples of the widespread greedy capitalism infused in our modern society.
The economic status of the main characters is poor, without hope of improving their condition, and at the mercy of a quasi-feudal system in North America during the late 1800's. Being a sharecropper, Ab and his family had to share half or two-thirds of the harvest with the landowner and out of their share pay for the necessities of life. As a result of this status, Ab and his family know from the start what the future will hold -- hard work for their landlord and mere survival for them.
In the grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck shows that class money and power is an important aspect of life. The reader can see that the upper class offers no help or assistance to the poor and working class. The reader can see that these people do not have many possessions due to the fact that they cannot work, this is supported by the quote “Then from the tents, from the crowded barns, groups of sodden men went out, their cloths slopping rags, their shoes muddy pulp.”(Steinbeck 591). These people had no money to buy new things such as cloths. The quote indicates that these people were in barns huddling together in there old rags for clothing that have been soaked by the rain. They had no dry cloths to change into nor did they have their own cloths, most were probably hand-me- downs that have been passed down by the older sibling or parent.