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Grapes Of Wrath Rhetorical Analysis

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Major Rhetorical Strategies in The Grapes Of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by novelist John Steinbeck is a classic novel, which can be credited to the way Steinbeck gets across his ideas about migrant workers in the Great Depression-era American Southwest. The book follows the Joad family, who come to California to find work, but instead discover the truth about the hardships in this promised land. Between the chapters about the Joads, interchapters appear; these provide more general accounts of the many migrant workers like the Joads. Steinbeck clearly does not agree with this treatment, and uses this book to help in ending the problem. Steinbeck expertly applies a somber yet passionate tone, personification, and dark imagery to both inform …show more content…

Steinbeck’s somber yet passionate tone is his most powerful tool, as by writing The Grapes of Wrath this way, he emphasizes how much of a victim the migrants are to their circumstances and the extent of the landowners’ greed. Early on, Steinbeck inflicts his passion into an account of a pawnbroker taking advantage of a migrant farmer. “We could have saved you, but you cut us down, and soon you will be cut down and there’ll be none of us to save you.” (94) This statement by the farmer has somewhat somber connotations, as he refers to both having misfortune, but the intensity in which he threatens the pawnbroker is unmistakable. As a result of the pawnbroker being so cruel, no mercy will be shown if they ever end up in an unfortunate circumstance. A more direct example comes from Steinbeck himself. “If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I”, and cuts you off forever from the “we”.” (166) In this statement, Steinbeck directly threatens the rich for

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