The Grapes of Wrath: Beauty in the Midst of Hopelessness
The Grapes of Wrath portrays life at its darkest. It is the story of migrant workers and the hardships and heartbreaks that they experience as they are driven from their land - the land that they have lived on for generations - so the banks can make a profit.
Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. That's what makes it ours - being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it (p.45).
Steinbeck follows the Joad family as they leave their farm to forge a new life in the land of opportunity - California - where
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There is no "happy ending" - when the book ends, Ma Joad's pride and joy, Tom, leaves because he has killed a man and cannot stay with his family without endangering them as well as himself. Rose of Sharon has just miscarried, and the Joads are driven by flooding from a temporarily happy home in a boxcar town. It seems as if the book has ended at a very uncomfortable and depressing point, but that is not the case. After spending over 600 pages getting to know the Joads, a reader has the sense that nothing can crush their indomitable spirit - that they will always go on, no matter how bad the circumstances are.
This is what I find fascinating about the book - the strength of the people who are put through horrendous conditions. They are driven from their homes, forced to live in a half-starved, miserable existence; yet they survive. Perhaps my favorite character in The Grapes of Wrath is Ma Joad. She seems to me to be the strongest and most steadfast character in the novel, and I admire her. Throughout all of the hardships that the Joads have to endure, Ma stands tall and proud, a pillar of strength that holds her family to-gether. Her overriding concern throughout the book is that the family has to stay to-gether. She says more than once, "It ain't good for folks to break up" (p.225), and that belief brings her out of the role of obedient wife to that of a woman who will even resort to physical conflict to get her way. At one point in the
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.
Being the strong- willed woman Rose of Sharon is she moves on with life. Then at the end of the
The plot of The Grapes of Wrath is a fairly simple one. The families are moving out of states such as Oklahoma and traveling west because they can no longer make a decent living growing crops. However, if one looks past this simple plot they will find out there is much more then meets the eye. The presence of greed is located throughout the novel; an example of this is located in chapter fifteen when it goes on to explain the different ways the waitress, Mae, acts depending on the financial status of the customer. If she is tending to a truck driver, who she knows has money, she will put on a show to lure money out of him, but if it is a traveler going down route 66 that act disappears. The message, which lies deep down in each chapter, is one that questions the greed in our ever-changing society. In our society everyone wants to fit in, and many times not everyone is treated with equal respect. In essence, these people are having their freedom ripped away right in front of their eyes. Steinbeck has strong feelings on this issue and this book illustrates them to the fullest extent.
The novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is a story that construes the journey of the Joad family through the brutal migration from Oklahoma 's destroying Dust Bowl to California corrupt promised land. Through the depiction of events and portrayal of characters, the bible takes part in the novel as one whole allusion. The anecdote of the struggle for survival in the fallen state of Oklahoma and in the “promised land” of California, reveals the same ideas shown as we explore in the bible. In The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck integrates the allegory of biblical references and values to create the image of a family’s journey to California during the Dust Bowl of the early 1900s.
“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.
In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck depicts the stories of migrant families during the Dust Bowl, where dust covered plantations, resulting in barren fields with incapabilities to grow crops. Due to barren lands, landowners forced the farmers off the fields, which causes the farmers to lose all of the reasons to stay. Therefore, the farmers set out onto a new journey that will hopefully lead them to a place where life can restart. However, this journey is not a perfectly smooth path; on the journey, the farmers face various adversities. Out of the countless families, John Steinbeck highlights the Joad family, who suffers through numerous misfortunes on the way West, toward California. Through the Joad family, Steinbeck portrays the novel as a form of social protest by emphasizing the unjust treatments the families receive , the deterioration of the false allusions the families hold of the American Dream, and by suggesting a future revolt of the working class.
The play, The Grapes of Wrath, explores how the Joad family adapts to a new reality, how their concern changes from their own family and problems, to other families and their difficulties, until their concern includes all of the migrants and the larger problems of unemployment and prejudice.
Moreover, in Chapter Thirteen, as the Joad family continues on their journey, they meet the Wilson family. The two families decide to carry on with their trip together. It is at this point that Steinbeck follows the pattern of the circle of life. Steinbeck begins by writing about the rebirth of Tom Joad. Next, Grampa dies. Following this, there is a birth for the Joads when they add the Wilson family to their own. However, as previously stated, in order to represent the hardships of the journey, many more deaths than births occur in the novel. In Chapter Eighteen alone, Noah leaves the family, the Joads continue on without the Wilson family, and Granma dies. It may seem like these losses would tear the family apart, but Ma Joad understands the concept of family, and tries her hardest to keep the family as one unit. For example, Ma Joad sits up all night with Granma's dead body, jut so the family can cross the border. "'The fambly hadda get acrost'" (312).
The Grapes of Wrath was a depiction of life in the Great Depression, specifically in the areas the Dust Bowl affected. The Joad family represents the “Okies”, which were people who went west looking for jobs. They also showcase the unfortunate events that happened to millions of people during the Great Depression. The Joad’s land was taken away/plowed over by superintendent and the land agents. After the destruction of their home and land they head west, to California, in search of jobs. With the Californians only using the Okies for cheap labor and giving them poor living conditions, they didn’t receive the best reputation. The Californians were rude to the Okies and treating them how they did is because the Okies were taking their jobs and
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.
The book, Grapes of Wrath, follows the life of the Joad family, who live in Oklahoma during the Depression. The story begins with the return of Tom Joad from prison, where he has spent the last few years. He killed a boy in a bar fight and is now on parole. He is taken by surprise when he returns to Oklahoma only to find that his house is in ruins and his family is not there. He doesn’t know that, while he was gone, the banks forced his family and thousands of others off their land. Tom is accompanied by a former priest, Casey, who searches with Tom for his family. Tom and Casey find the Joad family at Tom’s uncle’s house. The family is preparing to move west to California in hopes that they
In the last chapter of the book, the family finds shelter from a storm in an old barn, where they find an old man dying of starvation and his young son beside him. Ma exchanges a look of meaning with Rosasharn, and she knows that Rosasharn understands what she must do. To save the old man from death, Rosasharn does something both brave and selfless, and has the old man suckles the milk that would have otherwise gone to her dead baby. This is where Rose of Sharon truly grows up, for when one is in need she is able to put others before herself and give life to someone in
When Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, our country was just starting to recover from The Great Depression. The novel he wrote, though fiction, was not an uncommon tale in many lives. When this book was first published, the majority of those reading it understood where it was coming from-they had lived it. But now very few people understand the horrors of what went on in that time. The style in which Steinbeck chose to write The Grapes of Wrath helps get across the book's message.
In Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, he describes the struggle of the small farmer and farmworker. The principal characters define quiet dignity and courage in their struggle to survive and in the caring for their loved ones. Through this novel, Steinbeck displays his respect for all the poor and oppressed of our world.
“They had no argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it – fought with a low wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five”(Steinbeck). The renowned novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is a realistic portrayal of life and social conditions during the 30’s when the Dust Bowl swept across the nation, causing many to fall deeper into the depression. This caused many families to leave their homes in search of a safer and more hopeful land. The Grapes of Wrath follows Tom Joad, his family, and many other migrant farmers as they migrate from their Oklahoma farms into their new, hope filled life in California. The struggles that these characters endure