In today’s society there are many social issues present, one of them being unemployment. Currently 6.6 million Americans are unemployed, and they are unable to pay their mortgage, tuition, and basic needs. The streets of America are run-down and blanket of sadness clouds American towns. As a result people are forced to change their lifestyle and hope for unemployment benefits, and pray that they will be hired again. The following writing is about an unemployed man named Michael who struggles to support himself and his family. He is a former construction worker who has been without a job for almost a year. He and his family depend on unemployment benefits from the federal government; in addition the federal government decides who get benefits and who doesn’t. When he goes to collect his unemployment benefits he is denied and becomes puzzled and angry as to why he could not collect his benefits. Michael feels that the federal government is doing nothing to help struggling Americans, and politicians have ran away from their responsibilities to their constituents. Finally the story models Steinbeck’s style of writing, with descriptive narration to show lives of struggling Americans, and dialogue to show the struggles of the main character.
The alarm clock rings and Michael slowly wakes up. He drags his feet over to his closet and see his hard hat, suddenly a feeling of nostalgia comes about taking him back to the scene of last job. He misses the sounds of the cranes and the
The Grapes of Wrath has become one of America’s most popular and influential novel. Throughout the story, Steinbeck's purpose of showing to his audience the struggles people had to go through during the Depression. Steinbeck’s use of rhetorical devices are able to bring in outside information that he learned to make this novel and intertwine it with a story plot that shocked America. Steinbeck shows us his purpose throughout the novel Steinbeck used the devices of juxtaposition, pathos, and a variety of prose styles to emphasize his purpose and to bring the story of a family moving west to life. One technique used to separate the parts of the novel is juxtaposition.
In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck effectively uses the rhetorical strategy of pathos to illuminate the dehumanization of migrant workers during the Great Depression. His story revolves around the Joad family, as they travel from Oklahoma to California in search of work. Steinbeck appeals to the reader’s empathy
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
In the late 1930 unemployment rates were dropping at exponential rates, people were traveling west looking for jobs, hoping to gain even the smallest amounts of money. They were struggling to survive, fighting for jobs and living in horrible conditions. The Dust Bowl had wiped out most of their homes and many were desperate, people referred to them as migrant workers. The story Of Mice and Men revolves around the adventure of two migrant workers, George and Lennie. The book begins with a scene of nature, calm and beautiful yet cruel and complex. Much like nature, John Steinbeck's book tells the dark side of our nation and it’s people. Because of this, Steinbeck's book is still valuable to teach students. His simple yet complex story characterizes
You can judge a society by its treatment of the old, the weak, the helpless and the needy. Through the narrative conventions of foreshadowing and characterisation, John Steinbeck, in his novel Of Mice And Men, published in 1937, is able to effectively reveal the imperfections of America’s capitalist
By presenting how the rich landowners and businessmen take advantage of the migrant workers and pit them against each other, Steinbeck reveals the harsher facets of capitalist society and the obstacles that the migrants face within it. The migrants had lost almost everything with the bank reclaiming their lands, and, yet, they face more hardships at the hands of wealthy capitalists. Before they even start their journey, greedy salesmen take advantage of them by selling them
During the Great Depression, migrant farmers sought out work to stay alive. When they finally found a job to sustain them, workers were mistreated, starved, paid poor wages, and, worst of all, robbed of necessary human companionship. John Steinbeck captures the hopelessness of Depression-era farm life in his novella Of Mice and Men. Throughout the novella, most characters have a disability crippling them and pushing them away from other workers on the farm. Their disabilities are a physical embodiment of their isolation. Steinbeck uses his disabled characters to illustrate the depth of their loneliness, as well as to exemplify different types of loneliness.
Seventy-five years later, John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and the film adaptation, are still relevant to life now, because there are several relatable themes running through the book and movie. The novel depicts the about the economic inequality of the 1840s and 1930s. Yet still today, there is economic inequality. The wealthier people with jobs also look down on the poorer, unemployed people. Perhaps there is a fear that the jobless will come in and steal jobs. However, the American dream is clearly present in the novel and has been throughout history.
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.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a novel set during the mid-1930s drought and the fall of the American stock market. It depicts the plight of migrant workers throughout this time period, and follows the life of the protagonist, recently-released Oklahoma state convict, Tom Joad. He met up with former preacher Jim Casy, who renounced his ministerial calling due to his newfound belief that all life is holy, even the aspects that were categorized by others as sinful. After serving four years in prison on a manslaughter charge, Tom found Jim and together they returned to Tom’s family’s farm only to find it deserted, much like all the surrounding farms. The next day, the two men traveled to Tom’s uncle’s home, where he discovered the rest of his family packing to move to California in the hopes of finding a better life. This migration leads to death, abandonment, disappointment, and a new dream of organizing migrant workers to aid the depleted job market. The novel helped me to understand the struggle of the times, and what it means to lose everything and everyone in such a short period. Throughout these things, however grim they may seem, there is always a glimmer of hope.
John Steinbeck’s book Of Mice and Men is an extraordinary novel with unique characteristics. The novel is about an uncommon friendship between two extremely different individuals who are living and working together. This story belong to the genres tragic realistic fiction, historical fiction and drama. The linking between the novel and The Great Depression emphasizes throughout the story, which makes the novel very realistic and down to earth. The author touches on several themes such as: the unreachable American dream, the economic injustices, loneliness, friendship and people’s propensity for cruelty. In this book review, we will get into a deeper understanding of what the actual story means.
The unconventionally written intercalary chapters of Steinbeck's novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, are designed to show the readers a view of economic depression and social aspects of America during this time period. Steinbeck tells the reader about the situation through a macroscopic point of view, when he writes the intercalary chapters. It is through these intercalary chapters that Steinbeck tells us about the struggle of many migrant farmers who are pushed out of their homes and start to live their lives on the road, while trying to find places for them to work. Between each of these intercalary chapters are narrative chapters where Steinbeck gives the readers a microscopic view of the situation, by giving us an example of one of the migrant
Steinbeck utilizes the novel as a form of social protest by enunciating the brutal and inhumane way the wealthier class treat the migrant workers. For instance, in order to not loose any profit from the fields, the affluent bankers decide to forcefully drive the families off the fields using tractors to “bite into the house corner, crumble the wall, wrench the little houses from its foundation”(39). However, the working class does not have the opportunity to refuse this decision because of the desperate
John Steinbeck wrote ‘Of Mice and Men’ to show how hard life was for migrant ranch workers during the time of the Great Depression and how they were often exploited by their employers. In showing how George and Lennie’s dream of owning their own piece of land did not come true, Steinbeck explores a wider theme, criticising the idea of the American Dream. The American Dream tells people that there is ‘opportunity for each... regardless of the fortuitous circumstance of birth and position. Steinbeck criticises this as these ranch workers were given few opportunities. Settings play a very important part in the novel as they pinpoint clear times and places giving a sense of realism to the story, but they are also used to create atmosphere.
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, takes place during the Great Depression, a time when troubled and distressed American men and women lived; a time of poverty and an economic crisis. When change is thought upon, it is to be thought of new life and new experiences. The Great Depression is the kind of change that replaces a part of American living with “ Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the lan’ is empty, an’ this whole country is empty” ( Steinbeck 94). In his work, Steinbeck presents the hardships that Americans had to go through by being mindful of particular aspects which makes the reader understand the characters’ distress. For example, the landscape of the farm lands. Even though the land has its brutality, it grows to be the scenery for humans to be able to recognize and consider their troubles about work and life in general. With these concerns, there are differences between the people who are accustomed to the landscape and admire it, and those who do not agree with it. In the novel, Steinbeck uses attributes of class conflict and injustice as a way of presenting and socially commenting that the Great Depression brought attention to more problems beyond the idea of poverty.