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The Grapes Of Wrath Chapter 5 Summary

Decent Essays

The plot of the novel The Grapes of Wrath has been confusing readers ever since the book was first written. Steinbeck carefully writes the chapters so that they eventually come together and make sense, or they add extreme detail to the novel. The plot of the book is woven to show, in great detail, how hard the Joads had it. This is why Steinbeck constantly changes between a 3rd person view and a narrator. A great example of a chapter adding to the story is chapter 7. Chapter 7 is a monologue of a used car sales man, and how much he is ripping people off. “If the women likes it we can screw the old man.” Chapter 8 starts with the Joads getting ready to head to California, having just bought a used Hudson Super-Six sedan. Showing how the Car Salesman was screwing people out of a lot of money shows that the Joads, and many other people probably lost a lot of money to something they shouldn’t have. The symbolic turtle is also a great interweaving of chapters. In chapter 3 the turtle is attempting to crawl across the highway, and in chapter 4 the turtle is picked up by Tom. Two chapters later the turtle is finally released, but continues to move in the same direction that Tom found it in. The Joads soon follow the turtle in the same direction that it was crawling, showing that they are …show more content…

Through the dialogue and actions of the farmers, we can fully understand how confused and angry they were by the way the chapter is written. Steinbeck puts us in their place in chapter 9, and it does a great deal of good in helping us, the reader, understanding their struggle. Almost the entire book is written very similar to this, by showing us how tough they had it, instead of just telling us. “Maybe we can start again, in the new rich land – in California, where the fruit grows. We’ll start

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