Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Dust bowl 1930s america
Ending analysis of the grapes of wrath
Ending analysis of the grapes of wrath
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Dust bowl 1930s america
John Steinbeck’s acclaimed novel, The Grapes of Wrath, embodies his generation’s horrific tragedy. John Steinbeck’s writing gives insight on the devastating effects of the Dust Bowl on thousands of families and those who helped them. While Steinbeck's novel focuses on the Joad's family journey, he also includes writing of the general struggle of many families at the time. In John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the usage of the term “Okies” degrades the workers, while the personification of the cars help depict the struggle of the journey, to exemplify the adaptation the migrant workers had to make to survive the new life.
Throughout the novel, Steinbeck separates the demographic of people with steady jobs and income from the migrant workers by having other characters call the latter “Okies.” For example, when the Joads were in California, a fellow migrant worker explained to the Joad men that the connotation of the term Okie has changed from being Oklahoma-born to being a low life. The migrant worker exclaimed the harsh reality that, “[Okie] means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you’re scum” (Steinbeck 205-06). The term Okie classifies the group of migrant workers that come from different walks of life under one stereotype. With all the workers under one term, masses were stripped of their individuality, their identity. The demeaning term forces all the workers into the lowest level of society. Furthermore, as the story progresses, the connotation of Okie worsens as the workers become filthy and over-populating like rats scrambling from area to area. As a California farm owner- who is offering work- confronts his helper, the appalled owner exclaims, “Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t hu...
... middle of paper ...
...ting setbacks the families faced by portraying their last piece of property struggling and being the back spine of the Okies.
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, uses dehumanized "Okies" and personified cars to aid in the explanation of hardships of making it in a new society and how in order to survive, change must take place. Steinbeck’s novel portrays a family as they struggle in the heartless world. Both the usage of dehumanized workers and personified cars helps portray the deep fear and uncertainty the migrant workers began facing. By using figurative language, Steinbeck captures the general endeavor all the Okies who were unwillingly labeled as one class: scum. Ultimately, each willing family tossed aside their past, surrendering to their new foreign life.
Works Cited
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.
...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.
In the novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck walks us through the journey of best friends named George and Lennie, who work on a ranch during the Great Depression in California’s Salinas Valley to achieve their goals. Throughout the book, Steinbeck suggest that social hierarchy and classification can lead toward a treatment to lower class workers, different genders and race, and the mentally disabled, when compared to white men workers.
Another way the landowners invoke hostilities is the very way they refer to these poor families. When Tom asks, "Okie? What's that?" this character responds, "Well, Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum." By using such a foul name, the landowners further alienate themselves from these people. Not only does such a name invoke hatred in the minds of the poor folks, but it also further reiterates the revulsion the landowners feel towards theses folks for no reason other than being there.
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 Setting of this book starts out in Oklahoma where the land is drying up and dust is everywhere. “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) The dust is so bad the families can 't do anything but huddle in their homes and protect themselves. “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.”(Steinbeck,5) Steinbeck goes on to describe through chapter one how because it is so dry and dusty the farmers cannot farm or pay off their land and so they are forced by the bank to give up their homes. The setting is sad and everybody in this time is struggling especially those who owns farms. The depression and struggle stays the same but the setting changes as the Joad family travel to
Continuing on through part two of “The Grapes of Wrath”, chapter twelve gives a description of the migrants as they continued on their journey down Highway 66 to the westward components of California (Steinbeck 117-122). In Chapter thirteen, expounds how the Joads were seen traveling and spending the night down Route 66, and while traveling along the way Grampa Joad passed away from a stroke and had to be buried along the road. Tom and Al ended up having to repair the Wilsons’ car, and during that moment the families decided to continue on their travels (Steinbeck 123-149). Chapter fourteen outlines the possibilities for social change innate in the migrants' poignant situation (Steinbeck 150-152). Chapter fifteen gives a description of the
America is renown for being a land opportunity; however, there were moments in the country’s history where opportunity was not always available. America’s poor often played the game of survival of the fittest. This game featured immigrants coming to America with hopes to live the American Dream and farmers moving from one agricultural landscape to another during harsh growing seasons. Few mediums have been able to capture the entirety of the weary immigrant and the lowly farmer’s experience like the novels The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. These books contain an undeniable similarity in its tragedies and injustices, which are portrayed through the parallel philosophies of Tom Joad and Jurgis Rudkus;however, these books also contain differences in Jim Casy and Phil Conner that show the mirror image strife and struggle thrown upon the impoverished.
A clear example of the reader sharing the migrant experience is shown when the Joads must leave their home, “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past? No. Leave it. Burn it.” (Page 120) This passage allows the reader to become one with the migrants and to sense their emotional suffering and loss. The reader can easily imagine themselves in the position of the migrants, losing everything they have, and it is the thought of this that touches the reader’s heart and arouses their compassion for the migrants. In addition, “The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And the coroners must fill in certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.” (Page 477) Chapter twenty-five, which describes an over abundance of food and people dying of starvation, is very effective in capturing the despair and misery of the families. It makes the reader angry that innocent children must die so that large corporations can make a profit and it alerts the reader to the inhumane treatment the migrants received. Furthermore, “They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred.” (Page 318) The people who traveled to California had been forced to leave their homes, their past, and their lives and travel to a land they had never seen, where they were treated with disgust and hated because they were poor. The coldness that was directed towards the migrants fills the reader’s heart with pity for them and turns their anger at the bank, large corporations, police, and all those who acted in inhumane ways towards the migrants. Steinbeck tears the reader’s heart to pieces with his imagery about how the migrants were treated and his descriptions about the obstacles that they had to face.
In the novels Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989) and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939), both authors explore the enduring strength of the human spirit, complex family dynamics, and the power of hope to create change in one’s world. The message of both texts is that people are both big and small; they can enact powerful change in the world around them, but even the most righteous change enacted by one person alone cannot affect great numbers.
Its 1937, in the middle of the Great Depression. There are migrant workers with few job opportunities. Disability and prejudice lead to no respect and no pride. You are a nobody traveling alone and it is your own fault. There is no one to blame, or lean on for help. It was a desperate time for all working class americans. Struggling to make a stake, let alone make ends meet. It is a constant cycle for some, get a job, make a stake, blow it, and repeat. In a dark time like this nobody would dare to think that they could make it out. The price of living is high, and never stops rising. Many will never make it, and many have lost hope trying. In John Steinbeck's novella Of
This reference to the bank employees to one monster points negatively toward the people who work with money and control the money of America. Metonymy makes negative connotation toward the authority control the money,as does repetition make negative connotation toward the poor Americans. Steinbeck pities the lower class of America by saying “Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat” (Steinbeck 316). The repetition in these sentences demonstrates a feeling of sympathy for the ones in the country with less money. Having money becomes the largest part of being in America during the Dust Bowl. Capitalism grows to be as an important aspect for not only the poor people, however the landowners too. Sentence structure helps to reveal the growing capitalism in America. Farming becomes less and less
At the time of the Dust Bowl, many migrant families had an idealization of California as a beautiful and a wonderful place to work and raise a family (Minnesota, 1996). However, when they got there, it was not as nice as they thought it would be. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck talks about the Joads family journey to the promise land, California. Little did the Joads know, that once they got there, things didn’t go as planned.. The Joads ended up living out of their car in a poorly conditioned camp. More so, the Joads were treated poorly by the people of the land. The Californians believed that the hungry and impoverished people, like the Joads were a threat to their land. Meanwhile at the camp, the Joads were hired by employers to work on the farm. The employers exploited the farmworkers, underpaid them, and the work conditions were not good. The employers provided housing to the Joads, however these houses are shack-like and lacked basic utilities. In one part of the novel, Steinbeck tells a story of a man whose children died due to starvation. The man was unable to feed his children because the wages he made from working were too low. His employer decided to underpay him for the labor he had done, therefore his family suffered the
) “The Bank isn’t like a man” (page 45)– Both of the land owners and the tenants seem to be entrapped by a bigger entity. Steinbeck includes the reader in the emotional suffering of the farmers by connecting the human predicaments associated with the Dust Storm. The real threats of security originate from the greed of the Banks, which are devoid of any human feeling and emotion. The owners of the land blame must tell the sharecroppers and farmers to vacate the land, and they blame the banks in the process. Greed also transcends onto this level because the owners passively accept the situation that allows them to make profits while they avoid the moral implications of such. The tractor is the main instrument that finalizes and carries out this
The workers in this time of the novel experienced being used and abused in certain ways. They were worked vigorously, had no family, no place to call home, and treated with no respect.
This is a brief literary analysis of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath is a classic American novel written by Steinbeck in 1939. It narrates the life of the Joad family as they travel from Oklahoma to find a new home in California after they are moved off of their farmland. The Grapes of Wrath also provides historical narrative on America during the time of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck's descriptive language paints a picturesque, however appalling, image of the land, its people, and the living conditions of families who were forced out of their homes. This paper will analyze the roles of men and women in the novel and how they may or may not have conformed to the roles traditionally expected of both genders at the time.