Analysis Of Making A Home In A Restless World By Scott Russell Sanders

A major drought, over-cultivation, and a country suffering from one of the greatest depressions in history are all it took to displace hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners and send them, and everything they had, out west. The Dust Bowl ruined crops all across the Great Plains region, crops that people depended on for survival. When no food could be grown and no money could be made, entire families, sometimes up to 8 people or more, packed up everything they had and began the journey to California, where it was rumored that jobs were in full supply. Without even closing the door behind them in some cases, these families left farms that had been with them for generations, only to end up in a foreign place where they were neither welcomed

The "dirty thirties," as many called it, was a time when the earth ran amok in southern plains for the better part of a decade. This great American tragedy, which was more devastating environmentally as well as economically than anything in America's past or present, painstakingly tested the spirit of the southern plainsmen. The proud folks of the south refused at first to accept government help, optimistically believing that better days were ahead. Some moved out of the plains, running from not only drought but from the new machine-controlled agriculture. As John Steinbeck wrote in the bestseller The Grapes of Wrath, "it was not nature that broke the people-they could handle the drought. It was business farming, seeking a better return on land investments and buying tractors to pursue it, that had broken these people, smashing their identity as natural beings wedded to the land."(pg. 58) The machines, one-crop specialization, non-resident farming, and soil abuse were tangible threats to the American agriculture, but it was the capitalistic economic values behind these land exploitations that drove the plainsmen from their land and created the Dust Bowl.

The dust bowl was a tragic time in America for so many families and John Steinbeck does a great job at getting up-close and personal with one family to show these tragedies. In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck employed a variety of rhetorical devices, such as asyndeton, personification and simile, in order to persuade his readers to enact positive change from the turmoil of the Great Depression. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck tells the fictional narrative of Tom Joad and his family, while exploring social issues and the hardships of families who had to endure the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s purpose was to challenge readers to look at

People who tend to migrate a lot are less applicable of understanding and appreciating new ways of life. In response to an essay by Salman Rushdie on the benefits of moving, Scott Russell Sanders, in his essay “Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World,” claims that people should not immerse themselves into places but rather into ideas and values and also that people should care for the earth rather than for their egotistic desires. Through his use of a nostalgic tone and implied metaphors Sanders critiques Rushdie’s claims about the negative impact of migration and he also demonstrates why it is better for people to immerse themselves to their location rather than old beliefs and habits.

Thus, he evokes the support of his idea that moving is unreasonable and illogical within the reader. In addition, the author opposes Rushdie’s “enthusiasm for migration” by quoting Rushdie’s words on the elimination of nationalism that comes with moving. Sanders then says, “... who would pretend that a history of migration has immunized the United States against bigotry? And even if, by uprooting ourselves, we shed our chauvinism, is that all we lose?” (lines 40-43)

The author, Scott Russell Sanders; in his essay ¨Staying Put: Making a Home In a Restless World,¨ carefully crafted use of diction, imagery and figurative language generates his unfavorable attitude towards people ceasing to be migrants, instead of becoming inhabitants. His purpose is to respond to an essay written by Salman Rushdie and to convince the reader to stop uprooting themselves when things get tough and to settle in to where they are and ¨make it durable and long lasting¨. This purpose was created by direct quotes and explanations, yet respectful opinion.

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.

The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the years of the 1930’s, which affected the Midwestern people, an example the farmers, which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. John Steinbeck wrote in his novel from 1939 The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, Caravans, carloads, and homeless. Totals of 20,000, 50,000, 100,000, and 200,000 people. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural

Lou Ann, a woman in the process of divorcing from her husband, invites Estevan and Esperanza to her house. They begin to talk and Lou Ann defends Estevan from the harsh comments of Edna, an older woman at Lou Ann’s house, revealing a large factor in why Estevan and Esperanza left Guatemala. “This man you are looking at is an English teacher. He did not come here so he could wash egg foo yung off plates and take orders from a five-year-old”. (Kingsolver, ch. 7) Lou Ann recalls that Estevan “did not come here so he could wash egg foo yung off plates” revealing Estevan's hopes to find a strong job in America. This corresponds with the story of a Syrian family that has been resettled in New Jersey. The father of the family explains how his children have been given a chance to build their futures in America. “ Of course when I see my kids going to...build their futures, I am going to be the happiest.”(PBS) This is one example of a common situation. A family of immigrants fleeing their homes to find a future for their kids and for themselves. The bigger picture of this idea is reflected by America’s opinion on immigrants. If America doesn't allow immigrants to enter and find jobs, than immigrants are closed off in their homes with violence often surrounding

The printed work of the Dust Bowl written by Donald Worster tells of the devastating man-made events that occurred between 1929 and 1939. Worster described this time in history as the darkest moment life in the southern plains encountered in the twentieth-century (4) which was a time where drought, poverty, and famine were of concern. Worster also ties the Great Depression with the Dust Bowl and said that the same society produced them both because of the weakness of America (5). He strongly believes that the Dust Bowl was not a disaster created by nature, but a crisis created by man due to capitalism. Dust Bowl gives a powerful stance on how man ignored the limits of the land which led them into the dirty thirties; however, his beliefs cause him to disregard the disaster as the fault of nature, and specifically blamed man.

Source 1- The Dust Bowl is a popular name for the approximately 388,500-km2 (150,000-mi2) area that includes the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and adjacent parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas. The area is characterized by light soil, a low annual rainfall of 380 mm (15 in), and high winds. The federal government replanted grass, planted trees, and introduced scientific agricultural methods; as a result, farming became possible again. The Dust Bowl endured other, less severe droughts in the 1950s and '60s. The migration and hardships of the Dust Bowl farmers are described in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck uses numerous literary techniques to advocate for change in the social and political attitudes of the Dust Bowl era. Simile, personification, and imagery are among the many devices that add to the novel’s ability to influence the audience’s views. Moreover, through his use of detail, Steinbeck is able to develop a strong bond between the reader and the Joad clan. This bond that is created evokes empathy from the audience towards the Joads as they face numerous challenges along their journey. The chapters go between the Joad’s story and a broad perspective of the Dust Bowl’s effect on the lives of Mid-western farmers in which Steinbeck illustrates dust storms devastating the land, banks evicting tenant

The 1930s were a time of hardship for many across the United States. Not only was the Great Depression making it difficult for families to eat every day, but the Dust Bowl swept through the plains states making it nearly impossible to farm the land in which they relied. John Steinbeck saw how the Dust Bowl affected farmers, primarily the tenant farmers, and journeyed to California after droves of families. These families were dispossessed from the farms they had worked for years, if not generations (Mills 388). Steinbeck was guided by Tom Collins, the real-life model for the Weedpatch camp’s manager Jim Rawley, through one of the federal migrant worker camps. He was able to see for himself,

The novel connotes the Dust Bowl for what it is: a horrific struggle of survival. Steinbeck’s composition of this literary masterpiece gained the respect of many Americans who were previously unaware of the families who faced unbearable hardships during this time and were left with nothing. (Richard Henry) Steinbeck also uses intercalary chapters to provide the reader with information and insight on the Dust Bowl and other situations that were faced outside of the general fiction that

The Dust Bowl, a series of severe dust storms in the 1930’s, left the southern plains of the United States as a wasteland. The storms occurred due to the lack of use of dryland farming techniques to prevent wind erosion. Powerful winds would pick up loose soil and carry the sediment around the countryside. Called “black blizzard” or “black rollers”, these storms had the potential to black out the sky completely. Due to the inability to grow and sell crops, banks evicted families and foreclosed their properties, leaving them homeless and without an income. The author of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, wrote his American realist novel to allow readers to understand the experiences of the migrants from the Dust Bowl era. Not many