The Dust Bowl In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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

Many people are seen journeying to California because their homes were taken down. They all have hopes to make a living in the west while making good money and having a steady job. There are handbills all around, and Pa has one that says, “Pea Pickers Wanted in California. Good Wages All Season. 800 Pickers Wanted.” (147). Because of these claims, there are false hopes that arise. Wilson, a friend of the Joads, talks about how the journey to the west is worth it, for the jobs are easy and there are good wages, which means that with some luck, “a fella could have a place of his own” (147). The reality, however, is that with many people going to different farms, there are more workers, and therefore less wages distributed among those workers. Through these handbills, John Steinbeck shows how the maker of these – the upper class – makes sure that many people will be attracted to the falsified wages that will be earned, which manipulate everyone who is willing to work. Another instance of this deceit was shown when two cars drove into a camp where the Joads were staying. Men came out of the cars and asked if anyone wanted work, explaining that there were jobs in Tulare County and that they needed a lot of pickers. However, this was the only information given, and when asked about how much would be paid, the men would not give an answer because they did not want to pay the workers a lot of money. Steinbeck incorporates these secretive characters to show that the upper class tricks those of the lower by censoring important information that when found out, may stop the lower class from obeying the upper class’s commands, and an example of this rebelling is shown when the workers argued that “if [they] don’t know [how much they will pay], [they] got no right to hire men” (263). The upper class

As crop prices fell, farmers were forced to mortgage their lands and take out loans in order to grow more and more crop just to break even. When these tactics were ultimately unsuccessful, the banks closed in and quickly foreclosed on the farmers estates. These mass foreclosures led to a belief among farmers that they were all slaves to their “eastern masters” and that only the freedom of unlimited silver would release them from their shackles.

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

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

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).

In his novel Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck integrated many biblical references and values throughout the book. This provided a more intriguing and complex style of writing that he used to tell about the Dust Bowl of the early 1900’s and the arduous journey the Joad family and many others took to reach California.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, pays homage to the critical impact the Great Depression had on dust bowl farmers. The growing demand for wheat products forced farmers to overgraze their property. This reduced the overall usefulness and biodiversity of the land, and attributed to the desertification of their establishments. With this, the once lush fields turned to dust, which blew away with the commencement of the severe drought in the early 1930s. Steinbeck utilizes the lives of the Joad family to depict how farmers were often forced to flee their homes in search of better jobs during this time period. Because of the stock market’s demise, no one was purchasing their crops. Banks were required to drive farmers out of their homes, as they could not afford to keep supporting them without profit. The agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl intensified the economical impact of the Great Depression and added to the misery of the migrant workers.

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

    The Dust bowl was an ecological and human disaster in the Southwestern Great Plains regions of the United States in the 1930's. The areas affected were Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The poor handling of the land and years of drought caused this great disaster (Jones "History"). During this time the "Okies"--a name given to the migrants that traveled from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, or anywhere in the Southwest or the northern plains to California--encountered many hardships. These hardships are brilliantly shown in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Scholars agree, "The most important fact about the dust storms was not scientific but human: their tragic effect

Steinbeck, in chapters seventeen and eighteen, creates an eerie image within the migrants’ lives using strategies like tone and personification. The migrants of the Dust Bowl endure the loss of their home, the experience of having little to no money, and often death. In chapters seventeen and eighteen, Steinbeck uses a sympathetic and somber tone and personification to highlight the dark, dreary mood during the Dust Bowl and to inform readers that dark times often overshadow the good times, especially during the Dust Bowl.

The Dust Bowl was a devastating event that left thousands of people living in Oklahoma and surrounding states jobless and homeless. Families like the Joads in John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath, were forced out of their homes, because the dust made the land useless to farm and earn a living from. Hope was found, though, in the promise of jobs in California, prompting many families to travel the miles to relocate to the supposedly prosperous area. However, the reality shocked many travelers. Not only did the people in California not welcome the newcomers well, but there was not enough jobs to sustain the thousands of migrants that headed to California.

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.