Prompt #6 The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, is a story of the Joad family and their travels west. The setting of Steinbeck 's novel is the Great Depression in Oklahoma. During this time, a long period of drought and high winds affected large parts of the Midwest, including much of Oklahoma, creating what was called the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses different elements and narrative styles to endow his novel with a powerful sense of realism and authenticity. He uses intercalary chapters to give his readers insight as to what actually happened during the Great Depression. Steinbeck also used different language. He changed the dialog of the characters to very slang and informal to give the readers a better grasp of how people spoke during the 1930 's. The language John Steinbeck uses in The Grapes of Wrath is very informal. He uses it to help set the tone also. He does this in-order to help the reader understand how the people spoke in more of a slang type fashion. For example, “Well, don’t do nothing you don’t want me to hear about” (Steinbeck, 7). The language of this portrays slang, as it does throughout the whole novel. The reader probably thinks of somebody who isn’t very smart or isn’t very clean. It helps the readers to visualize the characters. …show more content…
Realism and authenticity is very evident throughout The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck uses things such as real events; setting, symbolism, foreshadowing of future events that actually happened, and many other things help ascertain this sense. With the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck has factual statements all throughout the novel. Intercalary chapters or nonfiction chapters, are gives the novel it’s most powerful sense of realism and authenticity. “The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects” (Steinbeck, 35). Factual statements such as this are the main reason The Grapes of Wrath is so
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath has become an American classic in its seventy-eight years of existence due to its accurate interpretation of the struggles faced by midwestern farmers and their journey west. The book is formatted using intercalary chapters, which tell a broader story than just the narrative. This is a strong decision that enhances the novel with expertly executed figurative language and furthers the plot by giving explanations to past events. Steinbeck’s choice to use this structure is quite beneficial and is partially to blame for the novel’s literary credibility.
“The Grapes of Wrath” takes place during the great depression: which was a substantial economic downside in United States history. At the same time, racism continues in the United States. The Okies are very talented farmers and most of them travel along route 66 to hope for a better life, but something was waiting for them that was unexpected to these people. They did not receive any governmental supports they were ignorant, and this makes native people easier to realize Okies as an outsider also they found menial and low paying jobs. Steinbeck implies that man turns against another human for the survival of the fittest; therefore, they do not mind to put another human in a situation that is challenging to survive.
Oftentimes, people are unable to realize what they possess until it has been taken from them. John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath portrays an Oklahoman family of farmers forced to migrate west after their lives were crushed in the 1930 Dust Bowl. The passage near the exposition of the novel illustrates a severe dust storm followed by the family’s discovery that their hard-earned crop had been lost. This scene depicts the struggle of midwestern families during the Depression. Steinbeck demonstrates this battle for survival through the use of symbolism, imagery, and characterization.
The Grapes of Wrath is a diverse book that contains many different themes throughout. Food availability for families and communities is emphasized in this book often. With families not having enough food to survive and feed their loved ones. This struggle of availability is not just a portrayal of fiction, but was a common problem with many families who actually experienced the dust bowl first-hand. We can use the Grapes of Wrath as an example and a passage to this time period.
Intercalary Chapter Literary Analysis During the Great Depression, the nation as a whole was stripped of financial security and forced into a survivalist way of living. This changed the ways that people interacted with one another and the overall mentality of society. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is torn from their land and find themselves with nothing, a common story for migrant farmers of that time, derogatorily called “Okies” by Californians. But this is not the only group that is struggling, the entire county was in a state of panic and bruteness, no matter how “well off” they seemed to be.
The Great Depression was a time of economic crisis around the world from the time period 1929 to World War II. To help capture the feeling in this period, John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. The main plot of of the story is about the Joads, a farming family forced from their home sent to search for work in California. Steinbeck includes a series of intercalary chapters to help paint a picture of migrant workers and the challenges they faced. In chapter 9, Steinbeck explores the emotional trials the tenants forced to endure when they are required to leave their homes and their lives, this chapter is an appeal to pathos.
The Grapes of Wrath, one of his most well-known works is exemplary of Steinbeck’s pursuit to bring attention to the lower class and their struggles during the Great Depression, and to hold those who caused the Depression accountable, as seen in his quote “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]. I’ve done my damnedest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags” (“The Grapes of Wrath”]. Published in 1939, the novel follows a family of tenant farmers who are forced to turn their land over to the banks and journey across the Dust Bowl to the ‘promised land’ of California (“John Ernst Steinbeck”). The Grapes of Wrath became highly debated and criticized, and many accused Steinbeck of dramatizing the conditions portrayed in the novel to prove a point; however, he had actually underplayed the conditions, feeling that “exact descriptions would have gotten in the way of his story.” Though embraced by the working class, critics condemned the novel as a ‘pack of lies’ and ‘Communist propaganda,’ and the book was banned from 1939 to 1941.
The author of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, wrote his American realist novel to allow readers to understand the experiences of the migrants from the Dust Bowl era. Not many people
John Steinbeck, in the novel, Grapes of Wrath, identifies the hardships and struggle to portray the positive aspects of the human spirit amongst the struggle of the migrant farmers and the devastation of the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck supports his defense by providing the reader with imagery, symbolism and intense biblical allusions. The author’s purpose is to illustrate the migrant farmers in order to fully exploit their positive aspects in the midst of hardships. Steinbeck writes in a passionate tone for an audience that requires further understanding of the situation.
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is a classic American novel that shows the difficulties migrant workers had to go through during the Great Depression. The novel’s intercalary chapters use setting, syntax and other literary elements to depict the hardships that migrant families went through and to create a tone of despair in the story. Body Paragraph 1: By using both syntax and diction, Steinbeck develops a tone of despair in the Intercalary Chapter 25 of the grapes of wrath.
Since the book came out in 1939, everyone has had a opinion on the ending to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It has a very controversial ending, that Steinbeck thought would name the last nail into the coffin, so to speak, on how bad the dust bowl and moving west really was. The ending starts when the Joad family is threatened with a flood, so they make their way to a old barn where they find a boy and his old father. The boy says his father is starving, and that he can’t keep anything solid down. He needs something like soup or milk.
The tone of chapter 11 in John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is sympathetic, sad and hopeless. His word choice and syntax show how the sad houses were left to decay in the weather. His use of descriptive words paints a picture in the reader's mind. As each paragraph unfolds, new details come to life and adds to the imagery. While it may seem unimportant, this intercalary chapter shows how the effects of the great depression affected common households.
Grapes of Wrath clearly illustrate the class struggle between workers and the upper class. Steinbeck displays the discrimination between the migrant people and landowners. Migrant workers are handled worse than animals, family’s or “Okies” are starving as food is wasted by the wealthy and the landowners maintain control through violence. “What do you want us to do? We can't take less share of the crop – we're half starved now.
In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the chapters alternate between two perspectives of a story. One chapter focuses on the tenants as a whole, while the other chapter focuses specifically of a family of tenants, the Joads, and their journey to California. Chapter 5 is the former and Steinbeck does an excellent job of omniscient third person point of view to describe the situation. Chapter 5’s main idea is to set the conflict and let the readers make connections between Steinbeck’s alternating chapters with foreshadowing. Steinbeck is effectual in letting readers make connections both to the world and the text itself with the use of exposition, and symbolism.
In Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the emotions that wrecked the nation in the 1930s are eloquently expressed through his distinct writing style. The struggles faced by many Americans in this time period, provided Steinbeck with ample material to create his characters who battle daily for socio-economic survival. Their animalistic qualities and residence in the lower class, contribute to the novel’s naturalistic flair. Steinbeck’s emphasis on the control the environment has over its inhabitants, and their instinctive, survivalistic nature are what qualify The Grapes of Wrath as a naturalistic novel.