Man's Relationship to the Land in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath

Throughout John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, many concepts appear that were noted in How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. However, the three chapters of Foster’s how-to guide that most apply to Steinbeck’s novel were “It’s All About Sex…,” “Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not),” and “It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow.” On more than one occasion these concepts are hidden within the book, and two of them actually seem somewhat linked together. After reading between the lines, The Grapes of Wrath has an extremely intricate plot and many ulterior meanings. Foster’s book helps to solve these meanings and make it so that the novel can be completely understood.

The land that the tractors invaded is now vacant and dead. The tractors are still there, toiling the land. The narrator says, “But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself” (Steinbeck 148). Here, Steinbeck is saying that men who use machinery do not love the land, they are like the tools they use, heartless and inhuman. The narrator first describes the tractor that the man is using as “dead.” This implies that the man’s work is not full of emotion and life. It is an unfeeling routine as if the man is not human but a machine as well. The narrator goes on to say that the man “does not know or love” the land. The machine has disabled the worker’s human instinct to care for and connect with the land that provides for him. Since the workers have lost that natural tendency, they have lost part of their

The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is set in a time during the great depression, in a poor farming town where everyone is reliant on one another for their own survival. During a tough summer of farming due to dust suffocating large numbers of crops, families are struggling to survive. When the large companies that own the land realize it would be more profitable to evict the current residents and farm it all with large machinery many families are forced to leave their homes of many generations and travel halfway across the country to support their families. We see many examples of man’s inhumanity to man and greed throughout the course of this novel.

Throughout the book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the physical transition of the Joad family from a small close-knit group of people living a quiet life on a farm in Oklahoma, corresponds with the internal transition of the concept of family. As the Joads leave their farm and journey westward, they no longer live just within their own isolated unit. Becoming involved with other families as they migrate, changes their focus and by the end of the book, the family members each reach out in their own way to embrace all of mankind as a family.

During the Great Depression, many citizens faced an arduous lifestyle of unemployment. However, many people managed to entertain themselves by reading literature such as The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck witnessed an injustice towards farmers during the Great Depression, and this inspired Steinbeck to present his perspective of the maltreatment to the open through The Grapes of Wrath. The fictional novel describes how unfortunate conditions, during the Great Depression, force an Oklahoma farmer family to travel to California in search for an easy life, job opportunities, and a bright future. John Steinbeck represented and connected his tones through his trope, making it an excellent read. In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Steinbeck exploits a disturbing and melancholy tone in The Grapes of Wrath in order to describe the desolation and destitution of California, once the Joad family arrives. A majority of the novel supports Steinbeck’s disturbing tone, especially with the novel set during the Great Depression; moreover, the setting of the novel proves parallel with Steinbeck’s disturbing tone. Many families traveled to California in attempts to begin a better life; however, many of the migrants discovered that California’s lifestyle did not meet any of the expectation many of the families had. The poverty, low wages, and unemployment that the Okies faced in California proved disappointing, and Steinbeck continually illustrates the struggles the Okies face to

More specifically he depicts “farmers who have experienced some realization of the American dream; however, as a result of external forces, they lose sight of the dream and seek to regain it (Scott, 1985, p. 58). As harsh as it may seem, these external forces of nature, society, and man annihilate both the dream and the ability to function in society. The Grapes of Wrath posses within its characters the ideal American traits to chase the American dream. Steinbeck creates characters who are very resilient under terrible conditions and a world which has only shown them hostility, a lack of forgiveness, and circumstances that perpetuate failure. “Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath allows rebellious actions, as devoted Americans, conscious of the dream of individualistic survival experience, first an economic decline, both as result of natural causes and of the technology of twentieth-century America, then regression in morale and the physical declination of the family unit”(Scott, 1985, p.

In John Steinbeck 's The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad and his family are forced from their home during the 1930’s Oklahoma Dust Bowl and set out for California along with thousands of others in search of jobs, land, and hope for a brighter future. The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck’s way to expound about the injustice and hardship of real migrants during the Depression-era. He utilizes accurate factual information, somber imagery, and creates pathos, allowing readers connections to the Joad’s plight

Sense of place is a perspective of geography that can be seen in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As noted in The Human Mosaic sense of place is a term used to connote the humanistic view of geography, it seeks to understand the unique character of individual regions and places. In The Grapes of Wrath, farmers and their families are being kicked off of their land, when one family is selling all of their belongings one exclaims “This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years, are us. We can’t start again… And when the owner men told us to go, that’s us; and when the tractor hit the house, that’s us until we’re dead.” This was land was their place, they made memories there. Power and Ideology

The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, is a novel which demonstrates the lives of families during the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the struggles they faced on their route to California. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck applies his writing style in order to convey the theme and general plot of the novel.

During the Great Depression, the bank frequently took over lands and kicked people out of their homes. This “monster” bank caused many people to move out west to California, leaving them with nothing. Towards the beginning of The Grapes of Wrath, the new owners of the land who were sent by the bank are seen conversing with the tenant men—the previous owners of the land, about how the land is dying. The owners then proceeded to kick the tenants off the land. “The bank, the fifty-thousand-acre owner can't be responsible. You're on land that isn't yours” (Steinbeck 34). As the land is going to be plowed over with a tractor “The man in the iron seat” (35), or the tractor driver, is found out to be a friend of the tenants. His response when asked why he would turn against his fellow farmers is, “Times are changed don't you know…Get your three dollars a day, feed your kids” (37). This shows that when given the

During the story, a lot of families were losing their land to the banks. Many of the families had been living there for generations, and the land was wrongly taken from them. Steinbeck wanted to show how the conglomerates were taking away core parts of the families. He also wanted to show how they were mistreated by everyone. Steinbeck shows this point by writing how the banks severed the families’ ties that were connected to the land, showing how the banks destroyed people’s lands, and forced the families into destitution.

Not only does the land suffer from a break in the sacred connection between farmer and crops, the men lose a part of their humanity to the machine. Those "men" who run the tractors are described in the novel as being "part of the monster (Steinbeck, 48)." They have given their humanity to the company in return for money to buy food that was produced by machines, not by men. Chapter eleven describes the slow degrading of the spirits of the tractor men and the migrants who no longer know the land. The slow deterioration of the houses, with no people to care for and be sheltered by them, is symbolic of the death of the land and the people when they are not connected. (Steinbeck 158-159)

And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer” (Steinbeck 316). Steinbeck emphasizes the power of the landowners and their greed. The landowners restrict the migrants and the farmers from achieving anything to stay on top. The landowners want wealth and power for themselves, so they make it impossible for others to achieve success. The landowners show hypocrisy because they prove the American Dream is not real because America offers opportunity, but no farmers or migrants are given any opportunities.

In the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck sets the idea of how life was in the time period. Not only does he set the entire novel in motion by describing the layer of dust as the oppression of life, but how the people react to it and each other. Steinbeck talks about the land being the man’s and