The Road 66 Symbol Quotes

Steinbeck provides this anecdote in order to foreshadow events in future chapters. In this chapter, Steinbeck describes a situation in which a group of people in Akron, Ohio formed a union and revolted against the authorities. While Steinbeck demonstrates the migrant workers as innocent people looking for peaceful solutions to their

“And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass. His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along…For a moment he stopped, his head held high…At last he started to climbed the embankment…As the embankment grew steeper and steeper, the more frantic were the efforts of the land turtle…The head upraised and peered over the wall to the broad smooth plain of cement…The car swung to the right…The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot. And now a light truck approached…His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle…and rolled it off the highway….little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright….And the turtle crawled on down the embankment.” (Steinbeck, 15-16) This is compared to the flight of the migrant workers down Highway 66. “Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66-the long concrete path across the country, weaving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield…66 is the path of people in flight,. ..66 is the mother road, the road of flight…All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night they stopped near water. In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, lose connecting rods hammered and

In Of Mice and Men, the Steinbeck theme of bullying and cruelty are demonstrated through the relationships of the farm workers, how they talk to each other and treat each other. It is contrasted by the accidental violence of George. Steinbeck makes it seem almost

The next section of chapter 21 offers an explanation of the hostility that the migrants meet upon arrival in California. Steinbeck describes:

Violence plays a key part in John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice And Men, and there must be a reasoning behind this. In this essay I will pick apart some of the acts of violence that feature in the book, and try to explore why Steinbeck has included each one, how it develops the novel, the characters in it and helps him convey the key themes or messages he wishes to incorporate in his “valley of the world.”

Farmers needed strong animals such as oxen and horses to pull the plows on the ground to make the land farmable. As a result to the wet and dry temperatures, grasshoppers would feast on the limited amount of crops grown on the farms. “This year we had another very dry season resulting in the light crops on which the grasshoppers came down by multiplied millions…the grasshoppers came I such swarms that they looked in the distance like fast-gathering rain clouds flying through the air... the grain was completely hid from sight… the grasshoppers would take meat, bread and other things from the table” (13). The houses on the farms that were made of sod were not very stable and attracted bugs. The bugs lived in the sod walls and roof. “In moving into all kinds of houses we find that all kinds of insects that prey upon human blood. One house we found… the bugs sailed out upon us by the hundreds… we killed more the two hundred besides the many we had deprived of life before beginning to count” (13). The living conditions of the newly relocated families were unimaginable. The limited food they were able to grow due to the inclement weather was eaten by grasshoppers, and the unstable sod houses were infested with bugs. The farmer’s lives were made easier by the extreme investment by the United States government in the railroad industry. This way their crops could be shipped to different parts of the

“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.

The sermon-like feel of the chapter is effective because it motivates the audience, willing the workers to come together and unite against the elite. The words that Steinbeck chooses to use in this chapter not only resemble biblical language, they also show a clear contrast with how the land is being used. The biblical language can be recognized when Steinbeck beautifully depicts California before the greed manifested. He describes what can be perceived as paradise, an allusion of sorts to the Garden of Eden. This language and allusion brings the audience a sense of serenity and peacefulness that soothes the reader. This sensation is ripped away from the reader when he begins to describe the rot and the decay caused by the miserliness of the elite. By depicting the good found in the land with quasi-biblical language, the greed of the privileged becomes much more malicious and cruel. This contrast helps the audience grasp Steinbeck’s message of how the greed is causing so much turmoil in a state that was once plentiful and luscious. Steinbeck also relies on symbolism to portray his message.

Throughout the book, Steinbeck discredits individualism by highlighting the adverse effects that he sees in it. Steinbeck, draws a specific line through the population - a division of the rich from the poor - and identifies the division as the primary cause for evil and suffering in the world. Much of the adversity experienced by the Joads and the other migrants stem directly from selfishness. Self-interest is what motivates the landowners and capitalists to use a system in which thousands of families sink deep into poverty.

Through the characters in the book, Steinbeck shows how he feels about police misconduct towards those living in poverty. Steinbeck uses his characters not just as entertainment for his readers, but as symbols so people are aware and conscious of what 's really going on not just in the book but in the country they live in. He uses many examples in the book to show how cruel the police can be. One example of this is on p.292 a woman is accidently shot in her hand, as the officer who shot her fell to the floor and tripped Tom took his gun and said: “Fella like that ain 't got no right to a gun.” It 's clear that the officer wasn’t considering the fact that no one was armed but him and didn’t show any remorse for the women mistakenly shot. Through this incident, Steinbeck is showing the abuse of authority and power against poor migrants who have little to nothing. He believes

As the many families camp together, proximity combined with necessity breaks down barriers of relation, and miniature societies form with there own unwritten rules and expectations. It is in one of these "Hoovervilles" that the Joads have a wicked confrontation with a vigilant police officer. A woman is shot, Tom and Floyd Knowles nearly become fugitives, and Jim Casey is arrested and thus removed from both the family and society. This sacrificing of self for the good of the group strengthens the bonds between the migrants in the Hooverville, and Casey's experience with fellow inmates in prison gives him an important realization about the power of organized protest. Incidentally, these terrible losses at the Hooverville drive the Joads in fear to what will turn out to be a far better place, and the knowledge that there are others in the same situation who will help lends unifying strength to the family and other migrants.

Characters in The Grapes of Wrath are often contrasted to emphasize certain qualities in their relationships, the most notable being a lack of empathy versus a caring and generous nature. Steinbeck’s use of juxtaposition is key to understanding the significance of the contrast involving the landowners and the migrants and why they cannot share sympathies and opinions. These two groups are both rivals and continuously reinforce differences in their lifestyles, and such is the case for the landowners and migrants, which are two drastically different classes that will not cooperate. The migrants are searching for job opportunities and safe places, but are often cheated by the landowners, who are corrupted by their drive for cheap labor and, ultimately, riches,

In the twenty-fifth chapter of his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck presents the reader with a series of vivid images, accompanied by a series of powerful indictments. Steinbeck effectively uses both the potent imagery and clear statements of what he perceives as fact to convey his message. This short chapter offers a succinct portrayal of one of the major themes of the larger work. Namely, the potential bounty of nature corrupted and left to rot by a profit-driven system, a system that ultimately fails.

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.

When families like the Joads began on their treacherous journey to California, along with the thousands of other families, they were not socially accepted or taken care of along the way. Farmers traveling were given the derogatory nickname of “Okies”, stereotyping that they all came from Oklahoma (Schleeter). Everyone disliked Okies, especially those in California, and when they arrived they were stuck living in cardboard boxes in filthy camps (Schleeter). These squalid camps of thousands were called “Hoovervilles”, and the Joad family spent a fair amount of time in one (Marchand). Steinbeck depicted the horror these camps so fantastically, that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt called to reform laws governing migrant camps (Schleeter). Those in poverty could only rely on one another, Ma Joad describes this beautifully in saying,” If you’re in trouble go to the poor people. They’re the only one who will help” (Steinbeck). The camps were often burned, and when the Joad’s burned, they managed to get into a government-funded, self-managed camp (Marchand). Steinbeck structured the plot of his story to move from one family, to many families, to the human experience, in order to speak for the social issues of the masses (Schleeter). He also had effect of speaking for thousands who are suffering with the same prejudices as the Joad family by speaking in third-person plural to turn