Okie Essays

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck 's now classic novel The Grapes of Wrath captured the epic story of an Oklahoma farm family driven west to California by dust storms, drought, and economic hardship. It was a story that generations of Americans have also come to know through Dorothea Lange 's unforgettable photos of migrant families struggling to make a living in Depression-torn California. Now in James N. Gregory 's path-breaking American Exodus, there is at least an historical study that moves beyond

them to be a part of their community and repeat the same destruction. For the migrant farmers, There was a motto in many Oklahoma farming towns: “if it rains”, which determined much of the life of people who did not migrate out of the Dust Bowl. The Okie farmer subjects of Family in Barn, is an interesting choice considering, “farmers in the Dust Bowl were the least likely to move,” and only 36 percent had resided on farms as of that earlier date.” That being said this photograph seems to suggest

Dust Bowl migrants. The four major artists treated here are Dorothea Lange, whose photographs collected in Migrant Mother (1936) symbolized all Depression hopelessness; Woody Guthrie, whose Dust Bowl ballads were informed by his own experiences as an Okie migrant; John Steinbeck, whose novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) generalized human suffering; and John Ford, who adapted that novel to film the next year.

The Grapes of Wrath: A Review and Analysis "To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth." Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Opening Lines The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John E. Steinbeck. Published in 1939, the historical fiction combines an analytical social dialogue with a captivating narrative to recount the exodus of a family of tenant farmers westward, across the United States. Steinbeck 's personal

Ignorance of another's personal values or situation results in an impassable schism between the two parties. People fail to understand each other, and as such, they regard each other in lower lights. In “Heart of Darkness”, Joseph Conrad, through Marlow, writes his novella through a lense of ignorance and the perspective of the typical white person of the time in order to relate his story to the reader. Marlow and the accountant are contrasted with Kurtz to display the effects of evil on an individual

In society people interpret novels, television and movies, etc. by using symbols which are items that reveal deeper meaning and hidden messages that allow comprehension in the story. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby symbolism plays a main role in the understanding of the storyline which brings on a puzzling plot along with it. The symbolism is used to help the interpretation of each character and why certain items and scenarios are significant to the novel. Particularly, in The Great

The Grapes of Wrath: A Literary Analysis Some of the best and most efficient methods communicating issues pertaining to society are through literature that achieves empathy. Feelings of sympathy and concern are hard to achieve when relation to a situation cannot transpire. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck delivered the conditions and gruesome reality of the migrant and farm workers during the “dust bowl” years. Through Steinbeck’s novel, his use of symbolism and explicit language brings attention

The novel, The Day the Cowboys Quit, by Elmer Kelton is not a typical cowboy story filled with waving guns and violent fights. Instead, this story shows what the real life of a cowboy would have been like through the story of Hugh Hitchcock. The Day the Cowboys Quit is based on a cowboy strike that occurred in Tascosa, Texas in 1883. Kelton based his fictional story on the causes of the strike and what became as a result of the strike. This paper will explain historical events concerning the cowboys

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's award winning book based on the lives of people during the, Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath, has experienced a lot of criticism since its release in 1939. From the time it was published all the way up until present times, some people have found much at fault in this realist book, while other people recognize that their are many true parts of Steinbeck's book. Many people consider this book to be Steinbeck's greatest piece of work, while the overall response

The Dangers of Money in The Great Gatsby Money plays a big role in the lives of everyone. It can make them happy, or comfortable, but it can also be dangerous. In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald teaches us that obsessing over large sums of money and using it carelessly can lead down a dangerous path, how it can make you blind to responsibility, strip you of your goals, and give you false hope for happiness. One of the most dangerous outcomes of having a large amount of money is that

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe” (Douglass). In Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl Age novel, The Grapes Of Wrath, protagonist Tom Joad, and his family are forced from their farm due to the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, believing to set out to refuge for California, along with many struggling migrant workers. Including

The first movie” The Grapes of Wrath” is based on John Steinbeck 's novel that describes the story of a dispossessed Oklahoma family that fights to re-establish a new life in California during the Great Depression. The Joad family is forced to set out for California in hope for a better life, to leave the dustbowl of Oklahoma due to drought, dust storm and years of farmers without crops. Along the way, they face many hardships and once they reached California, they are harassed and mistreated for

In chapter twenty-one, Steinbeck introduces a logical argument, which, through rhetorical strategies such as word choice, tone, foreshadowing, and ethos, he was able to enhance the hostile emotions that were accumulated by the migrants and poor farmers and foreshadow that the oppression of them would be the downfall of the industry. The word choice chapter twenty-one provided, was a very important aspect to the overall meaning Steinbeck was trying to convey. In the opening of the chapter the Okies

The Grapes of Wrath is a diverse book that contains many different themes throughout. Food availability for families and communities is emphasized in this book often. With families not having enough food to survive and feed their loved ones. This struggle of availability is not just a portrayal of fiction, but was a common problem with many families who actually experienced the dust bowl first-hand. We can use the Grapes of Wrath as an example and a passage to this time period. In the story, “Grapes

Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle in 1906 during the time of progressivism to portray the horrors of the labor conditions and non existing sanitary conditions of the meat packing industry. Jurgis and his family, immigrants from Lithuania, came to America expecting a prosperous life. The family dreamed of coming to America for a better life full of success and opportunity but as they began working in the stockyards they were exposed to the terrible quality of life experienced by the factory workers

In How to Read Literature like a Professor, Thomas Foster says “most works must engage with their own specific period in ways that can be called political” (122). A good example of a major work containing obvious political overtones is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. In this novel focusing on a dispossessed family of Oklahoma farmers, Steinbeck criticizes the class prejudice against Dust Bowl migrants. He provides social commentary on the antagonism between Okies and Californians, while also condemning

New Historicism and The Grapes of Wrath The sun disappeared, next crops disappeared, then the people disappeared. Consequently, cause of everything disappearing, is because of the Dust Bowl which occurred in the 1930s caused people to flee from their homes to a state which they were not familiar with. In addition to, the Dust Bowl affected 75% of families due to the drought. For the most part; the Dust Bowl hit the farmers, due to a little rainfall and high winds the farmers could not grow

The Grapes of Wrath is the story of the Joads, a family of farmers who, like many other families during the great depression, were forced from their land by landowners and banks. Throughout the story, the major theme that is seen consistently is discrimination. Tom Joad, the main character of the film, is released from jail on probation to find that his family is gone, and his land and home are completely vacant. Due to the drought and poor farming conditions in Oklahoma during the 1930’s, otherwise

Different Types of Hunger Response In the essay, “Different Types of Hunger: Finding My Ways Through Generations of Okie Migration” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, the author, uses creative nonfiction to make a complicated and dense issue comprehensible. She does this effectively, but somewhat complexly, by breaking her essay into multiple stories that illustrates a variety of issues. The stories are told from her narrative ranging from her childhood to growing old, all while giving background knowledge of

Migration and Okie Culture in California, James N. Gregory attempts to change readers perspective of stereotypes created by artist during the Great Depression, such as those created by John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Dorthea Lange’s photograph of the “Migrant Mother”. In his book, Gregory “takes us back to the dust bowl migration” to reveal that there is more to Oklahoman, Arkansan, Texan, and Missourian immigrants than economic hardship. He focuses on regionalism, and an “Okie” subculture that