Term Paper on
the Grades of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the frantic
conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's
live. The novel tells of one family’s migration west to California from side to
side the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to ditch
their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set drifting because
tractors were fast industrializing their farms. The bank took control of their
land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the
Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the unkindness of
the landowners that take benefit of them, their poverty and readiness to work.
The Grapes of Wrath combines Steinbeck high regard of the land, his simple
hatred of corruption resultant from materialism and his abiding faith in the
common people to conquer the hostile environment. (John Steinbeck, Peter Lisca,
Kevin Hearle, 1996)
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The novel opens with a keeping picture of nature on run amok. The novel shows
the men and women that are continuous by nature. The theme is one of man verses
an antagonistic environment. His body destroyed but his spirit is not broken.
The method used to develop the theme of the novel is through the use of
symbolism. There are a number of uses of symbols in the novel from the turtle at
the beginning to the rain at the end. As each symbol is presented from first to
last the novel they show examples of the good and the bad belongings that exist
within the novel. The opening chapter paints a bright picture of the state of
affairs facing the drought-suffering farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a
covering all, smothering the life out of no matter which that wants to grow. The
dust is symbolic of the wearing away of the lives of the people. The dust is
identical with "deadness". The land is ruined way of life gone, people uprooted
and forced to leave. Secondly, the dust stands for profiteering banks in the
background that press the life out the land by forcing the people off the land.
The soil, the people have been exhausted of life and are browbeaten: The last
rain fell on the red and gray country of Oklahoma in early May. The weeds became
a dark green to protect themselves from the sun's firm rays. The wind grew
stronger, ripping up the weakened corn, and the air became so filled with dust
that the stars could not be seen at night. In the later part of the book a
turtle, which appears and recurs several times early in the novel, can be seen
to stand for continued existence, a driving life force in all of mankind that
cannot be beaten by nature or man. The turtle represents a hope that the trip to
the west is survivable by the farmer migrants. The turtle further represents the
migrant’s resists against nature by overcoming every obstruction he encounters:
the red ant in his path, the truck driver who tries to run over him, being
imprisoned in Tom Joad's jacket: And now a light truck approached, and as it
came near, the driver saw the turtle and veered to hit it. The driver of the
truck works for a large company, who try to stop the migrants from going west,
when the driver attempts to hit the turtle it is another example of the big
influential guy trying to squash or kill the little guy. All the turtle
encounters try’s its best to stop the turtle from making its westerly journey.
Steadily the turtle advances on, incongruously to the southwest, the direction
of the migration of people. The turtle is described as being lasting, ancient,
old and wise: horny head, yellowed toenails, and permanent high dome of shell,
funny old eyes. The driver of the truck, red ant and Tom Joad's jacket are all
symbolic of nature and man the try to stop the turtle from enduring his journey
westward to the promise land. The turtle helps to develop the theme by showing
its move violently against life comparing it with the Joad struggle against man.
The grapes seem to symbolize both resentment and copiousness. Grandpa the oldest
member of the Joad family talks of the grapes as symbols of abundance; all his
metaphors of what he is going to do with the grapes in California suggest
contentment, freedom, the goal for which the Joad family strive for: I'm gonna
let the juice run down ma face, bath in the dammed grapes. The grapes that are
talked about by Grandpa help to complicated the theme by showing that no matter
how nice all seems in California the truth is that their beauty is only skin
deep, in their souls they are decayed.
The rotten core verses the beautiful look. The willow tree that is located on
the Joad's farm represents the Joad family. The willow is described as being
unaffected and never bending to the wind or dust. The Joad family does not want
to move, they favor to stay on the land they grew up on, much the same as the
willow does. The willow donates to the theme by showing the reluctance of the
people to be removed from their land by the banks. The latter represents the
force making them leave their homes. The tree struggles against nature in much
the same way that the Joad family struggles against the Bank and large
companies. The rains that come at the end of the novel symbolize more than a few
things. Rain in which is extreme, in a certain way fulfills a cycle of the dust,
which is also unnecessary. In a way nature has reinstated a balance and has
initiated a new growth cycle. This tie in with other examples of the rebirth
idea in the ending, much in the way the Joad family will grow again. The rain
contributes to the theme by showing the cycle of nature that give an end to the
novel by showing that life is an example of birth and death. The rain is another
example of nature against man; the rain comes and floods the living quarters of
the Joads. The Joads try to stop the flood of their home by yet once more are
forced back when nature drops a tree causing a flood of water to ruin their home
forcing them to move. In a contradictory way rain can obliging to give life to
plants that need it to live. Depending on which extreme the rain is in; it can
be harmful or helpful. This is true for man; man can become both extremes bad
and good depending on his choosing. All through the novel there are several
symbols used to develop the theme man verses a hostile environment. Each symbol
used in the novel show examples of both extremes. Some represent man that
struggles against the environment; others paint a clear picture of the feelings
of the migrants. As each symbol is presented chronologically through the novel,
they come together at the end to paint a clear picture of the conditions,
treatment and feelings the people as they make their journey through the novel
to the West. (Wiley, John & Sons, 2000)
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The bleak spectacles created by the Great Depression, none has won a stronger
hold on the American thoughts than the travails of the Dust Bowl migrants.
Driven westward to California by drought, dust storms, and economic disaster,
they entered the national myths as symbols of American gravel and determination
in the face of hardship, and as symbolic victims, often rose when modern social
ills are addressed. The Panhandle of Texas was a part of one of the most
horrible disasters in U.S. agricultural history. As part of a five-state region
exaggerated by severe drought and soil wearing away, the "Dust Bowl" was result
of several factors. Cyclical drought and farming of slightly productive acreage
was worsened by a lack of soil protection methods. Because the disaster lasted
all through the 1930's, the lives of every Plain resident and expectations of
farming the region changed forever.
But formative what the Dust Bowl experience tells us about the sincere values of
Americans turns out to be more complex than such statements suggest. In the
images Steinbeck gave us, the migrants are browbeaten and more or less helpless
victims of economic, political, and natural forces further than their control
and even their understanding. Their experience required the unity and kindness
of the public and collective action by the migrants themselves. (Hurt, R.
Douglas1981) In all the imaginative representations of the Dust Bowl migration,
however, including the more traditional rendition of Steinbeck’s novel, the very
dissimilar values and views of the migrants themselves are oddly missing. Yet it
is an indication to the power of art that the existing myth is not exactly what
the artists intended either. It is a myth that has come to include more than the
Dust Bowl migration, more even than the Great Depression.
The Dust Bowl migrants were only about a third of the more than one million
migrants from around the nation who journeyed to California during the 1930s.
They came mostly from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas and, for the most
part, from outside the region that was hardest hit by the huge and frightening
dust storms of the early and mid-1930s. Indeed, the rate of migration to
California from this Dust Bowl region was lower during the depression than it
had been in previous decades or would be in later ones, when mild conditions and
the promise of economic opportunities drew hundreds of thousands to the Golden
State. In the popular imagination of the period, however, the dust storms came
to represent all the irresistible forces that were uprooting farmers and others
and pushing them westward, against their will, in search of work. The dust
storms were so dramatic, and the image of them so compelling, that they hidden
the fact that many of the families who arrived in California during the
depression were "pushed" there by other mishaps such as crop failures,
foreclosures, or the loss of blue-collar jobs or by competition from
agribusiness, in a southern agricultural economy that had begun to be distorted
even before the depression. (Dust Bowl, 1979)
Fleeing natural disaster or circumstances so irresistible that they seemed like
forces of nature, the Okies found that farming in California was very different
from what they had known at home. The family farm barely existed in their new
state. Large landowners and growers subjugated agriculture, and they needed
seasonal armies of cheap migrant labor to work their orchards of fruits and nuts
and vast fields of vegetables and cotton. Wages were low and working conditions
terrible.
After the Dust Bowl, agriculture improved, finally aided by irrigation. But
Oklahoma’s economy remained mainly at the mercy of agriculture and oil. While
droughts don’t affect Oklahoma’s famous oil reserves, oil prices surely affect
Oklahomans.
But Oklahomans are a tough breed. They’ve worn droughts and starvation, warfare,
political conspiracy and more starvation. More than weather adversity, they’ve
triumphed. Mineral resources made some Native Americans wealthy. The Oklahomans
found their glory in social activism.
Works Cited
Hurt R. Douglas. The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History. Chicago:
Nelson Hall, 1981, page 78,
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930's. New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford
University Press, 1979, page 19,
Kelly McGrath Vlcek, Kelly McGrath Vicek, The Grapes of Wrath (Cliff Notes),
Wiley, John & Sons, 2000, page 92,
John Steinbeck, Peter Lisca, Kevin Hearle, The Grapes of Wrath: Text and
Criticism, Viking Penguin, 1996, page 56.
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