Rhetorical Analysis Of The Grapes Of Wrath

American author, John Steinbeck, in an American realist novel titled “Grapes of Wrath” (1939), demonstrates how man gets stuck being controlled by a bigger power. Steinbeck supports his claim through the use of rhetorical strategies, such as, personification, repetition, and dialogue. Steinbeck's purpose is to demonstrate how man gets stuck in the relentless cycle of powerlessness. Steinbeck uses a desperate tone and old-fashioned language to appeal to the readers of the 20th century. Steinbeck begins by making the Bank come to life through personification.

Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath follows the difficult journey of the Joad family as the attempt to move to California. Interwoven into this story is small paragraphs that deliver smaller, individual messages. One such paragraph is paragraph 11. In this paragraph Steinbeck speaks of how the farms have changed over time. This juxtaposition of times seems insignificant and unrelatable to those who don’t look deeply into this short, quick story.

Though it is a book that has been on the censored list, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a worthy novel to continue in the high school curriculum due to its accurate portrayal of the time period. As a student reading this novel after many extensive United States history classes and the previous year taking AP United States History, I felt a new outlook after reading a fictional story about the matters of the depression and dust bowl of the 30’s. Steinbeck’s use of literary depiction strengthens the novel and makes it more than just a recollection of the time. His biblical allusions, imagery, symbolism, and figurative language allow the reader to immerse themselves in the time. As a result of this, the novel went from a tale of history to

John Steinbeck grew up in a booming farming community in Salinas, California; Steinbeck’s father was a manager of a flour mill, and his mother was a former school teacher. He had a comfortable childhood until his teenage years when his father lost his job at the flour mill and opened a feed and grain store that would fail. The Steinbeck family’s finances did not begin to stabilize until John Steinbeck was in college at Stanford University when Steinbeck’s father became the county’s treasurer. John Steinbeck’s own family dynamics have had an impact on the role of family that he establishes for the protagonist in his novel The Winter of Our Discontent.

Proceeding to look up some of the expressions since they are rarely used in today 's world of phrases and the slang. Notably, for one phrase “tom-cattin” when used I had trouble finding the meaning of some of the phrases and the slang used throughout the book. Consequently, there is also the overuse of the decor in the first three pages the word dust was recycled at least 24 times just in those pages. Seeming that Steinbeck went off trajectory with the portrayal of the surroundings in a few paragraphs. Moreover, the description of California is satisfactory it helps create the surroundings of the so called promise land that was thought of.

In addition to this, the contrast of the individual to that of the larger institutions of the time is also given emphasis, shedding light on how these two groups compare in the context of these struggles. With heavy religious overtones, the journey reveals much of the characters’ relation to their religion, and how these values have an impact on their individual self and their community as they journey westward. This journey and the novel as a whole tells a story of injustice and desperation, but also one of dreams and hope for a new life. In Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes Of Wrath, Steinbeck explores the ideas of the cultural and economic migrant oppression through the destructive forces and injustices of society. Through his rejection of the typical reliance on the institution of religion, Steinbeck demonstrates how the only true way to overcome such societal injustice is through the individual based spirit and in turn the human unity of these

The spirit of unity emerges as the one unfailing source of strength in Steinbeck’s novel. He tries and accomplishes in conveying it to the reader, through imagery. On multiple accounts,

This story reveals all the difficulties and all of the suffering proceeding of many of the migrant laborers during the Great Depression and also the Dust Bowl. The novel by Steinbeck has been written to criticize many of the careless and self-interested people and overly important corporate and banking elites for trying to increase their profit policies that would ultimately force many of the farmers to suffer and go through major tribulations. Through these careless actions many of these farmers had to go through things such as starving. It is a very well written political piece, it describes the actions by the lower classes in a great way. As the Grape of Wrath begins, the Joad family is a very traditional family and the structure of the family is in which where the men make the decisions and the women do as they are told.

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

The Great Depression was a time of serious plight and hardship for families across the world, but was especially gruesome in the United States. During this time the Southern region of the United States suffered from a severe drought that lasted for six years and due to poor agricultural practices alongside gusty winds, large dust storms were able to form. The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is set during this time and follows the journey of the farming family the Joads. As readers follow the family of twelve on their journey to California, a place they referred to as the “promised land,” there are many parallels made to the Bible. Steinbeck's use of Biblical allusions throughout the novel illustrates Joad's resilience to survive

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.

In the third chapter of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the author uses diction, symbolism, and imagery to foreshadow the Joad’s family journey to California through the connection with the turtle’s minutest movement. The turtle’s every movement portrays several circumstances that the Joad’s family have to overcome, in order to reach their goal to find reasonable jobs. Both the turtle and Joad’s family is traveling towards the southwest with different levels of obstacles waiting ahead of their journey, thus will provide discomfort with the lack of speed they have to succeed each and every problem. Also we can infer that the Joad’s family is moving really slowly and cautiously, because turtles are meant to be slow on land. So the author uses numerous rhetorical devices to correspond with the endurance of the turtle and the Joad’s family.

In specific, Steinbeck manipulates intercalary chapters, a robust narrative, and allusions in order to get his point that community is indispensable across. To begin, Steinbeck’s intercalary chapters abruptly halted the narrative, yet progressed the themes in a stunning manner. The turtle in chapter three is a delicate symbol and an excellent example of an intercalary chapter that moved the whole book, so to speak. Steinbeck leaves a whole chapter to describe a turtle for seemingly no apparent reason; nevertheless, when describing this turtle, he releases a powerful symbol that preys on the sympathy of the reader.

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.

Gender and the stereotypes that accompany this topic have played an immense role in history. Throughout history, the stereotypical family unit consists of a man being the head of the household, being the dominant and steadfast leader. It also favors women and children in a submissive role more focused on preserving the family within the household. These themes are extremely present in Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The Joad family which the story focuses on is a lower-class farm family in the Dust Bowl Era.