Summary Of Tractor By Steinbeck

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

From the story, "The Day the Tractor Came" I can assume that after this event the young child matured. They watched the tractor destroy their home and saw their strong father, that the family could always depend on, reduced to nothing. While looking at the space where the house once stood, they realized that this was where they were born, where they learned to walk, and it was the home their father had built. Going through something like that changes the whole family, because losing a home is traumatic. The child most likely matured and had to help the family a lot more. They probably needed to work at a younger age in order to earn money to buy another home (or buy the materials to build another house). They even mentioned that it was something

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

In addition, Steinbeck utilizes symbolism to help reveal his message to the audience. In this chapter, the putrefying crops that resulted from the system’s agricultural mismanagement represent the landowner’s greed, and how it is responsible for not only the

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.

I. John Steinbeck used his personal experiences as a laborer to write many of his novels like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.

Tractors are tools used by people but Steinbeck compares it to a corpse. He writes as if it should be alive, with a mind of it’s own. As if it’s more of a monster tearing up the land.

The unconventionally written intercalary chapters of Steinbeck's novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, are designed to show the readers a view of economic depression and social aspects of America during this time period. Steinbeck tells the reader about the situation through a macroscopic point of view, when he writes the intercalary chapters. It is through these intercalary chapters that Steinbeck tells us about the struggle of many migrant farmers who are pushed out of their homes and start to live their lives on the road, while trying to find places for them to work. Between each of these intercalary chapters are narrative chapters where Steinbeck gives the readers a microscopic view of the situation, by giving us an example of one of the migrant

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)

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

In John Steinbeck’s tragic, mangled novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the reader is shipped off into the heart of the great Dust Bowl in the American Midwest in the peak of American hardship. Through his use of realism in the era of the modern age, Steinbeck reveals the hardships that were faced by common American citizens during the Great Depression, and utilizes the Joad family in an effort to depict the lives of the farmers who had to flee to new land in the high hopes of a new and better life. The obstacles the family faces are similar to what countless other families had to face, with very little of the population able to successful thrive at the time. By utilizing the empowering endeavors unforeseen by these poor families and the meteorological catastrophes overlooking the Midwest, Steinbeck illustrates the nationwide panic faced by many Americans in an effort to delineate their confusion and uncertainty.

In this melancholy passage, Steinbeck’s “owner men” use euphemistic language to soften the blow of their heartless message and to deny any responsibility for the tragic results about to occur. When the owner men divulge the news that the tenants have to leave, they use euphemisms to diminish the harshness of the message. The owner men start off by declaring that the, “…the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough”(Steinbeck 32). Instead of saying the tenants aren't generating enough money, the owner men blame the land for being poor and that is the reason the tenants need to leave. The owner men continue using euphemistic language by saying, “You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all

Retribution was done correctly in Walter B. case but in my belief he needed rehabilitation too because what after he is out of his retribution. He still needs help and treatment because his urge would not be cure automatically. I am not oppose of his retribution but with retribution people like Walter need retribution too.