The bright colors and nice shirts all grab your attention at the store, but how did the cotton, grain, or wheat in the products come to be? In Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, mechanization brings capitalism and other unintended consequences, leads to the decision for land owners of whether to run a business using greed or virtue, and separates the working class.
Steinbeck starts The Grapes of Wrath by showing the Joad family who had just been removed from their farm. The Joads are one family of a monstrous number of families to be removed from their farms. They were raised on the land, some died on the land, and they were with approximately seven million families that lived on farms in the same day (“U.S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY,” 10). The banks told the Farmers’ Association to lower the overhead of all agricultural products by employing possibly one or two men to take the place of sixteen other men. The owner of the land had the choice to both get rich and be extremely wealthy by profiting off the loss and pain of others or to become one who is taken advantage of and becoming hungry and poor.
One of the main unintended consequences of employing one man to drive the tractor was a loss of contact to the land. The land owners became completely separated from their land. The people who farmed in the same way as the Joads lived for the land, and they lived because of the land. This relationship between farmer and land was destroyed due to the introduction of the tractor to the land. Land owners no longer knew when they needed to give the land a break, and for this reason many pieces of land became totally dust and truly became unformidable to any type of farming. This overuse of the land led to what we know as the Dust B...
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...reed which totally annihilated the working class’s bond of unity. If the working class had united maybe they would not have been so very miserable for such a long time. Maybe the Dustbowl would have never happened.
Works Cited
“Article III.” The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. Charles Wollenberg, ed. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988.
“Article IV.” The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. Charles Wollenberg, ed. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988.
Harvey, John, John Crowley, and Jack Hayes. U.S. Government. Department of Agriculture. Face of Rural America. 1975.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939. Eds. Peter Lisca with Kevin Hearle. New York: Viking,1997.
Rasmussen, Wayne D.. "The Challenge of Change." Trans. Array U.S. Agriculture in a Global Economy. 1985.
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In recent history, farming in America has changed dramatically, and Naylor’s farm is representative of many in the American Corn Belt. Though it began growing a variety of crops and keeping livestock too, Naylor now only plants corn and soybeans. In Naylor’s grandfather’s days, the farm fed the whole family with just enough left over for twelve others. Now, Naylor indirectly feeds an estimated 129 people, but this does not mean his farm is any more successful. In fact, Naylor’s farm cannot financially support his family.
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.
...r’s intended result was to show that the forces of industry capitalists would drive the working class to Socialism. Jack London, famous Socialist, commented, “What ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ did for the black slaves ‘The Jungle’ has a large chance to do for the white slaves of today.” By demonizing American industry he hoped to change the world. There are only a dozen or so pages concerned with the horrid details of meat production, but it was these informal references to the food they were buying and eating that angered the people and created public demand for reform.
In The Grapes of Wrath, Stienbeck illustrates such powerful images using his own values. When the Joad family starts deciding to move to California for a better life, the story begins. Tom comes home from prison and the family is reunited. The hopes of all are refreshed and the move seems to be a good idea. And here we have one of Steinbecks greatest value, the family or the group, and the ties that lie within it. This value is seen through many different examples in this novel.
In the Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck has achieved an interesting effect by breaking the narrative at intervals with short, impressionistic passages recorded as though by a motion picture camera moving quickly from one scene to another and from one focus to another. The novel is a powerful indictment of our capitalistic economy and a sharp criticism of the southwestern farmer for his imprudence in the care of his land. The outstanding feature of the Grapes of Wrath is its photographically detailed, if occasionally sentimentalized description of the American farmers of the Dust Bowl in the midthirties of the twentieth century.
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 since before anyone can remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned. He learns his family has moved in with his uncle John and decides to travel a short distance to see them. He arrives only to learn they are packing up their belongings and moving to California, someplace where there is a promise of work and food. This sets the Joad family off on a long and arduous journey with one goal: to survive.
The 1920’s were the singularly most influential years of farming in our country. The loss of farms following the war, and new agricultural practices resulted in the dawn of modern agriculture in our country. The shift from small family to big corporation during this time is now the basis for how our society deals with food today. Traditional farming in the 1920’s underwent a series of massive transitions following WWI as the number of farms decreased and the size of farms increased.
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...o. “The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis, Change, and Social Consequence of the Twentieth Century US Farming”. Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 103-124.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
---. The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. Charles Wollenberg, ed. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988.
Timmerman, John H. "The Squatter's Circle in The Grapes of Wrath." Studies in American Fiction 17.2 (Autumn 1989): 203-211. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 124. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Thompson, Paul B. and Stout, Bill A. Beyond The Large Farm. Westview Press, Inc.: Colorado 1991