Expectations of California in The Grapes of Wrath
The Joad family’s hopeful expectations of California in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath foreshadow grim times ahead. The characters are overzealous in their expectations of California. They think that in California they will be able to pick “a whole big bunch of grapes off a bush” and “squash ‘em on [their] face[s] an’ let them run off [their] chins” (83). Steinbeck calls California the “new rich land…where the fruit grows” (87). The characters’ obsessions with the “never cold” (91) California make the reader question what is actually happening in California. Throughout the first half of The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck sets up the characters for disappointment by making their hopes for
Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath follows the difficult journey of the Joad family as the attempt to move to California. Interwoven into this story is small paragraphs that deliver smaller, individual messages. One such paragraph is paragraph 11. In this paragraph Steinbeck speaks of how the farms have changed over time. This juxtaposition of times seems insignificant and unrelatable to those who don’t look deeply into this short, quick story.
John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, explains the story of the Joad family while simultaneously dealing with eternal human issues. We open on Tom Joad, fresh out of prison, hitchhiking his way back home after killing a man with a shovel. From there we travel through ideas of religion, capitalism, xenophobia, and determination. As Tom begins walking home from where he was dropped off, he runs across his childhood preacher, alone and barefoot, and discusses ideas of human desire and sin within the church after learning that Casy is no longer a member. Continuing on his way home, Tom finds his family’s barn abandoned and his neighbors gone.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a story that details the life of a poor Oklahoma family during the dust bowl. Before almost every chapter about the Joads, there is a vignette about an unnamed group of people that symbolize something that will happen to the Joads in the next chapter. This symbolism helps to demonstrate the Joads’ story and shows why the Joads’ story happened the way it did. In Chapter 21, Steinbeck shows the lack of decisions and individual thought by the migrants as well as the natives.
Intercalary Chapter Literary Analysis During the Great Depression, the nation as a whole was stripped of financial security and forced into a survivalist way of living. This changed the ways that people interacted with one another and the overall mentality of society. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is torn from their land and find themselves with nothing, a common story for migrant farmers of that time, derogatorily called “Okies” by Californians. But this is not the only group that is struggling, the entire county was in a state of panic and bruteness, no matter how “well off” they seemed to be.
In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck follows the Joad family as they suffer the hardships caused by the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. The most important lesson people can learn from the novel is the value of a human life. Although the 1930’s was a low point in American society, the ill-treatment of human beings is still relevant today. Just like Jim Casy’s philosophy, it is important to fight for the rights of the people and their dignity. There are several examples of oppression in The Grapes of wrath.
The Second Westward Migration The monsters came; they came to reclaim the land. The monsters are how the banks are referred to in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. The novel is a great example of how the industrialization impacted society, following the Joad family’s hardships on their move west. The industrialization of agricultures biggest impact on American society was the forced migration of marginalized populations from the dust bowl.
John Steinbeck has been a pillar of American literature for decades. His work, especially Grapes of Wrath and The Harvest Gypsies, helped to shed light on some of the issues that plagued California, and the rest of the United States during the Great Depression. His works accentuate the theme of the importance of community, especially when those with the power to help don 't. These novels take place during the Great Depression, a time when there were very few jobs, little stability, widespread poverty, and diminished hopes for the future. This era sets the stage on which these stories take place. During these harsh times, many people turned to the government or banks for help, but they were turned down by the banks because they wanted a profit, or they bankrupted, and the government 's resources were stretched so low they could only help few people.
This story reveals all the difficulties and all of the suffering proceeding of many of the migrant laborers during the Great Depression and also the Dust Bowl. The novel by Steinbeck has been written to criticize many of the careless and self-interested people and overly important corporate and banking elites for trying to increase their profit policies that would ultimately force many of the farmers to suffer and go through major tribulations. Through these careless actions many of these farmers had to go through things such as starving. It is a very well written political piece, it describes the actions by the lower classes in a great way. As the Grape of Wrath begins, the Joad family is a very traditional family and the structure of the family is in which where the men make the decisions and the women do as they are told.
Immigrants in the 1930s all across America struggled with their journeys to hope and redemption. The main purpose for chapter three, which depicted a turtle struggling to cross a highway, was to outline the struggle that the immigrants faced as they took their journey to a new destination where they would spend the rest of their lives, as well as sticking with those who could help them through this long, enduring excursion. Hopefully, when they reached those endpoints, they would have a new job and a life worth living. The Joad family, a family of farmers and the family depicted in The Grapes of Wrath, repeatedly have to go through events that could potentially throw them off course far enough to have no hope for returning to their former glory.
Since the book came out in 1939, everyone has had a opinion on the ending to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It has a very controversial ending, that Steinbeck thought would name the last nail into the coffin, so to speak, on how bad the dust bowl and moving west really was. The ending starts when the Joad family is threatened with a flood, so they make their way to a old barn where they find a boy and his old father. The boy says his father is starving, and that he can’t keep anything solid down. He needs something like soup or milk.
The tone of chapter 11 in John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is sympathetic, sad and hopeless. His word choice and syntax show how the sad houses were left to decay in the weather. His use of descriptive words paints a picture in the reader's mind. As each paragraph unfolds, new details come to life and adds to the imagery. While it may seem unimportant, this intercalary chapter shows how the effects of the great depression affected common households.
John Steinbeck has a style of writing unparalleled in history and in the modern world. In the same way, his philosophies are also unparalleled, with his focus in socialism not extending to communism or abnegation of spiritualism. His ideal world is utopian, holding the dust bowl migrant at the same level as the yeoman farmer was held in Jeffersonian times. In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck Steinbeck, who posses impregnable technique, conveys his message of a group working tirelessly for the betterment of the community.
Through John Steinbeck's plot in The Grapes of Wrath, the struggle of the typical American dreamer is depicted in the Joad’s attempt to move to California for a better life. While attempting this dream, the Joad family had to make multiple sacrifices. The first sacrifice occurs early on in their journey, the abandoning of their property (Steinbeck 59). This was extremely difficult for the Joads because they had lived on this land for a long time and they had many memories that had been created there.
Grapes of Wrath clearly illustrate the class struggle between workers and the upper class. Steinbeck displays the discrimination between the migrant people and landowners. Migrant workers are handled worse than animals, family’s or “Okies” are starving as food is wasted by the wealthy and the landowners maintain control through violence. “What do you want us to do? We can't take less share of the crop – we're half starved now.
Prompt #6 The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, is a story of the Joad family and their travels west. The setting of Steinbeck 's novel is the Great Depression in Oklahoma. During this time, a long period of drought and high winds affected large parts of the Midwest, including much of Oklahoma, creating what was called the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses different elements and narrative styles to endow his novel with a powerful sense of realism and authenticity.