The Grapes of Wrath: Novel versus Film
“America, the land of opportunities” When people hear this phrase, they may think America have always had a handful of opportunities for everyone, but this wasn’t the case in the novel “The Grapes of Wrath” written by John Steinbeck. In the 1930’s, North America faced the Great Depression, the longest economic slump ever experienced by the country. Author John Steinbeck wrote about the tragic experience of a poor American family (The Joads) as they get kicked off their Oklahoma home and moved west towards California, during the time of the Great Depression through his book. Steinbeck’s novel became so popular that the movie, consisting of the same name as the book, directed by John Ford was
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In the book Steinbeck usually describes a scene thoroughly so readers can get the idea what the mood and atmosphere is like. In the film, there is no narrator so the audience must absorb all this information on their own during a quick scene. In the novel when Grandpa Joad died, Grandma Joad suffered the most from the traumatic lost. “On her mattress, away from the fire, Granma whimpered softly like a puppy” (Ch.13). She mourn after his death and goes into a silent state for a couple of days. “Well, she’s yellin’ an’ talkin’ plenty now, on’y she’s talking to Grampa. Yelling at him. Kinda scary, too” (Ch.16) When Grandma Joad finally break her silence, she thinks she is speaking to Grandpa who have already passed away and have been buried. These details provided in the text shows the audience the suffering that the character in the story went through clearly. Through the transition from book to movie, the portrayal of suffering and sorrow when a loved one died came off a little dull. In the movie, you do not get much of Grandma’s reactions to her husband’s death. Grandma just passed away shortly after, so the audience does not get how tragic Grandpa’s death was, how harsh it was on Grandma to cause her to pass away and how much it affected the family. Another difference is between the novel and film is that the pace is different. The story within the book proceeds at a slower pace than the movie. This gives the
The Grapes of Wrath was written in 1939 in response to the Great Depression by John Steinback. The story follows the Joad family as they are forced to leave their home to travel California which promised land and work. The Joad Family represents many families who had to migrate to California. In chapter 9, Steinback shows us through syntax and diction the bitterness and sorrow migrant workers had to go through as they prepared to make their journey to California. Steinback use of diction and syntax in this chapter is what serves his purpose of writing and sets the tone.
“At the heart of every immigrant’s experience is a dream- a vision of hope that is embodied in his or her destination” (Gladstein 685). In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath the migrants imagined the absolute aspects of living care free to the west. However, everything changed once they traveled to the west, realizing the simple concept turned into hazardous problems. John Steinback emphasized the American dream of economic stability and truculent situations towards the Joads family's point of view. Throughout the immigration, the Joads family goes through constant and unpredictable changes in employment, and their eventual failure to find success in California. The novel has been called by critics "a celebration of the human spirit", in several ways it is true due to the aspects of human nature. Despite the hazardous actions people can do, it is important to realize everything around us.
Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, a very interesting book that supplies the multiple personalities of very diverse characters whose actions symbolizes how sometimes people are judged unfairly, and in The Grapes of Wrath people do not receive any justice with the public. People are treated like animals in both these books and have a heavy emphasis on dehumanization through the violation of the simplest form of rights and recognition of what is suppose to be the law. People are denied the right to be a part of society in The Grape of Wrath due to discrimination because of poverty, and people are denied to be a part of society in To Kill a Mockingbird due to racism.
John Steinbeck grew up in Salinas California, and came into contact with many migrant workers throughout his life. Steinbeck worked on many ranches as a ranch hand, and lived through the 1930’s observing the social inequalities towards the migrant workers. There were so many migrant workers in California due to the Dust Bowl, which completely tarnished the farming lands of the Great Plains. Along with bringing in a low amount of food to support their families, the national bank kicked many farmers off of their lands because of the stock market crash and the plummet of the economy. The government saw an opportunity to regain themselves in the Great Plains, so they moved everyone out and gave it all to large industrial companies. The families that had been kicked out of their homes had no place to go, and large farm owners in California wanted to take advantage of them. They sent out thousands of handbills making false promises of financial and job security, so
Messages can be conveyed to an audience in a number of different ways, whether it is a poem, a written story, or a movie. These different methods have the ability to convey similar messages but one method in particular will tend to be more successful than the others. A common example of this is the argument concerning the comparison of a book and a movie, which is better? Popular books that have been recently made into movies are Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games and fans tend to have a strong opinion of which version they prefer. Specific people have their own reasons for choosing which they favor, but the trend seems to be that books are preferred to the respective movie due to the incorporation of detail and narration within
While there are some similarities and differences to both the book and the movie. The book provides more character detail and gives you a sense of what the Great Depression was really like. While the movie has more Hollywood aspects and isn’t as depressing as the book, it still shows how the Depression really was. While I enjoyed the reading the book first and then watching the movie you get to then see how the Depression was depicted. With the movie being made in 1940 it gives it a very realistic
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
One reason why i know all was not right was because in the book on page 12 paragraph 4 it says. “Rush then noted that in recent days he had seen an unusual number of bilious fever, accompanied with symptoms of uncommonly malignity”. which shows that more people are getting sick with similar symptoms. So they realized that there was a sickness going around.
Walter does not take Mr. Linders money when he offers it for his family to not move into Clybourne Park because he was thinking about Travis, he was being pressured by his family, and feeling guilty about losing the rest of the money for the bar.
John Steinbeck wrote the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 to rouse its readers against those who were responsible for keeping the American people in poverty. The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, migrant farmers from Oklahoma traveling to California in search of an illusion of prosperity. The novel's strong stance stirred up much controversy, as it was often called Communist propaganda, and banned from schools due to its vulgar language. However, Steinbeck's novel is considered to be his greatest work. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and later became an Academy Award winning movie in 1940. The novel and the movie are both considered to be wonderful
The Great Depression was a great time of crisis that shook the entire world from 1929 to 1939. This huge economic crisis took its roots in America, where the topsoil on farms eroded and blew away on the strong winds, creating bad farming. Many migrant workers fled to California in hopes of finding work, money, and a place to live. Many people were shoved into areas that mimicked labor camps and ended up being caught in a never ending cycle of working and trying to obtain money to keep his or herself, and their family, alive. The book The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck is an American novel that takes place during this economic decline and it depicts just how difficult it was trying to work through this time. However, the film adaptation is slightly different from the novel, yet the characters become more real in the film as they’re brought to life, in a sense. Each thespian does an amazing job in depicting emotions and portraying his or her character, but the character who makes the biggest impact on the film’s audience is Tom Joad through how much he shows his emotions.
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
The first time I saw the movie, I believed it could be a long flashback that begins after the assault in the alley which fades into the Gorfein’s apartment and then brings us back to the present. The significance of the scene in the back alley behind the café plays a central role in portraying this sort of Lynchian loop, which reveals in the last scene how Llewyn is living in a time loop. Llewyn realizes this too in when he says a sarcastic “au revoir” to the shadowy figure that assaulted him in that back alley. Even though the details may change he knows that he is still going to end up with a busted lip because that’s his fate. Llewyn is trying to make it in the folk music industry and the trials and tribulations he faces along the way do
The Grapes of Wrath is a film that shows America’s most distressed and calamitous time period, “The Great Depression” which was a name given to an economic crisis and the apocalyptic “Dust Bowl”, a term that referred to a cataclysmic dust storm which eradicated and obliterated most of all America’s agriculture causing numerous farmers to be deprived of their own living and had their job ceased. The film was released on March 15, 1940 a year after the actual Great Depression ended, Directed by John Ford and starred by Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charlie Grapewin, and six other main characters. The film shows how people had to leave everything behind in order to live and help their family survive. In the film “grandpa” had to leave
John Ford’s dramatic film The Grapes of Wrath was released on March 15, 1940. This film was based on John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This film follows the Joad family on their long trip to California. It watches as they lose their home and are left with no choice but to pack their necessities and set off. Though they had no idea where they were going, they had no choice but to keep on, hoping that somewhere along the line someone would have mercy on them and they would find some form of work. Though the list of influential characters presented within the film is a rather short one, each character plays at least a small part in the eventual outcome of the text, so having to select just one as the most critical proves to be shockingly difficult. However, upon further scrutiny it begins to become clear that one character holds a steady level of importance throughout the duration of the text. Ma Joad is the only character presented with a large amount of importance that remains consistent from the very beginning to the final moments of the film.