Sympathy In Grapes Of Wrath And The Elephant Man

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.

A. “…‘What’s this call, this sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love…” (page 23, Chapter 4). This quote is an example of an metaphor. The use of this metaphor was to show the reader why the preacher doesn’t preach anymore. The effect the metaphor had on the reader was, for them to see how the preacher really viewed ‘the sperit’.

“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.

Josh Turner once said, “Life is a series of punches. It presents a lot of challenges. It presents a lot of hardship, but the people that are able to take those punches and able to move forward are the ones that really do have a lot of success and have a lot of joy in their life and have a lot of stories to tell, too” (Hardship Quotes). Rudy Ruettiger had many struggles in his life that set him back. He has taken those punches from life and moved forward getting closer to his dream every step of the way. He defied everyone’s doubts and beat the odds. This man wanted so badly to get into Notre Dame and he did just that. Shawn Grim, on the other hand, was a man who did not come from a very successful family. He had to work harder than ever before just to attempt to achieve his dream. Shawn did not succeed at his dream and was filled with heartbreak because of it. Rudy Ruettiger and Shawn Grim both had very similar dreams, but different hardships to work through that broke one down and

Throughout history man has made numerous excursions, far and wide. Moses' incredible walk through the Red Ocean and Columbus' transversing the Alantic are just yet a couple of thing that keep and eye on extraordinary voyages. Even today, great adventure are being made. Terry Fox's running crosswise over Canada while having cancer is just one of these such trips. In each one of these examples individuals have needed to transcend themselves and overcome emence chances, like a salmon swimming up stream to fulfill its life line.

When humans were in their primal state, before they could even comprehend calculus or geometry, they looked at the trees, bushes and plants and grabbed the fruit from their branches. They then looked to the stars and were fascinated the way we are today. Neanderthals reconciled the fact they could not reach these stars with the theory that they were a fruit for a much more powerful and an encompassing being. The point being humanity has a habit of explaining what we cannot fathom, by creating a construct of something greater than themselves, something omnipotent. The prominent religious books of our time, the new and old testament have struggled to explain what exactly the intangible being known as G-d can do as well as explaining the idea

Empathy is vital to trust- but what if that understanding is absent, or if sympathy is not given as needed? Such is the case of The Grapes of Wrath, where class differences rule over a turbulent and aggressive rivalry. The novel follows the struggling lower class, oppressed by the corrupt upper class, who cannot understand their hardships. This lack of understanding and willingness to sympathize with the lower class boosts tensions and further emphasizes differences between the classes, leading to the primary conflicts of the story. Through the use of juxtaposition and point of view in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck shows that the upper class lacks the empathy to relate to the struggles of the lower class.

The bestselling author, Daniel H. Pink, who was named one of the top fifteen business thinkers of the world and earned his BA at Northwestern University and his JD at Yale, stated “empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes.” The author of “The Harvest Gypsies,” Steinbeck, expresses a similar idea. In the excerpts from The Grapes of Wrath and “Tuesday Siesta,” both authors convey empathy efficiently. Nevertheless, the author of “The Harvest Gypsies” best evokes empathy in the reader by utilizing appeals to logos, auditory and visual imagery, and a grim metaphor.

“At the heart of every immigrant’s experience is a dream- a vision of hope that is embodied in his or her destination” (Gladstein, p. 685). In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, it is portrayed that the migrant’s thoughts of an American Dream is/was a simple and straightforward notion: go west (California), get employment and become rich. Little did they that know that an ideal and perfect life was difficult to accomplish and it corrupted the minds of those pursuing it. The author, John Steinberg, placed a lot of emphasis on the unachievable nature of the American Dream regarding economic stability in the novel through the cross-country migration of the Joads, their continuous and unpredictable changes in employment and eventually, their failure to find the success they so desired in California (Aghosh, Allentown, PA).

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls are the stories of two families who endure seemingly insurmountable odds to stay together. Just a few of the many hardships they face include financial instability and homelessness. The Walls and the Joads have a lot of qualities that help them stay together, but their saving qualities are their ambition and the leadership skills in the women.

   In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck uses both obvious references and subtle contrasts to emphasize the main theme of the novel: the sanctity of man's relationship to the natural world and to each other.

The Grapes of Wrath is set in the horrible stage of our American history, the Depression. Economic, social, and historical surroundings separate the common man of America into basically the rich and poor. A basic theme is that man turns against one another in a selfish pride to only protect themselves. For example, the landowners create a system in which migrants are treated like animals and pushed along from one roadside camp to the next. They are denied decent wages and forced to turn against their fellow scramblers to simply survive.

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

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 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