GOW Final Essay

Describe how Steinbeck's description of the characters and setting establish a specific tone for the novel.

The Grapes of Wrath novel starts off with a dull, boring, and slow tone, but as time passes, “boring” becomes optimistically dreamy, and soon after, it becomes a sense of disappointment and desperation. John Steinbeck wrote this novel to elicit sympathy for the farmers of the dust bowl, who had to migrate from their homes to find new jobs and lives, but the pace of this book brought on more pity than sympathy. The tone of The Grapes of Wrath shifts as the characters change and setting from their familiar farm shifts to the homeless west.

The first thing that sets the novel’s tone is the beginning chapters. They tell the readers about the drought full of dust and how the crops are dying, leaving the farming families with no way to make a living. The second chapter introduces one of the main characters, Tom Joad, in such a casual manner that nothing seems out of the ordinary in the slow life of the trucker or the diner—that is, until the end of the chapter, when Tom reveals that he’s been in jail. However, even then, he’s very casual about it. The chapter about the turtle makes the slow and boring tone obvious, but I saw that the turtle symbolized something of a foreshadowing when it was written: “And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. The truck went back to its course along the right side. Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright. The wild oat head fell out and three spear head seeds stuck in the ground. And as the turtle crawled on down the embankment, its shell dragged dirt over the seeds.” (Page 15-16.) While the pace of the book was set to slow, there was the omen of danger, hardships, luck, and new life—or the burial of an old one.

When the tone starts to move as the Joad family comes closer to California, there is a dreamlike quality to the journey that makes everything seem worth it. They think there will be lots of work, land to buy, and homes to make. Ma repeats it multiple times, “…I like to think how nice it’s gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An’ fruit ever’place, an’ people just bein’ in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder—that is, if we all get jobs an’ all work—maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An’ the little fellas go out an’ pick oranges right off the tree.” (Page 91.) She has a lot of hope as they approach their new home, and likes to think the best of it. For a moment, the novel takes a lighter tone, and a “happily ever after” is, perhaps, in the making.

And then there is a sense of impending doom, especially when a man the Joads meet when they get to California tells them, “She’s a nice country. But she was stole a long time ago. You git acrost the desert an’ come into the country aroun’ Bakersfield. An’ you never seen such purty country—all orchards an’ grapes, purtiest country you ever seen. An’ you’ll pass lan’ flat an’ fine with water thirty feet down, and that lan’s layin’ fallow. But you can’t have none of that lan’. That’s a Lan’ and Cattle Company. An’ if they don’t want ta work her, she ain’t gonna git worked. You go in there an’ plant you a little corn, an’ you’ll go to jail!” This is one of few warnings they receive and choose to ignore—they move onto California anyways, and the feeling of doom only grows as the story goes on. The tone gets darker as the Joads realize that the man’s words are the truth, and more people they meet say the same thing.

The mood gets dire when they run out of money, barely have food, use up all the gas, and don’t have a permanent place to stay. They move from camp to camp, adapt to life on the road, and scrounge for work with little pay. They can barely live off of it. The family breaks up little by little—first the grandparents die, then Noah and Connie leave… When all they have is each other, soon there are less of “each other” to depend on. When they do have work, they can’t get good food, and if they can get food, there’s not much of it. There are strikes because of the low pay, and when Tom finds Casy to be the leader of the strike, he tells him, “Tonight we had meat. Not much, but we had it. Think Pa’s gonna give up his meat on account a other fellas? An’ Rosasharn oughta get milk. Think Ma’s gonna wanta starve that baby jus’ ‘cause a bunch a fellas is yellin’ outside a gate?” (Page 384.) They would take what they can get, and when winter comes, there isn’t even any work to do, so they’re especially desperate. Even if they had to work for meager bits of food, they would have to do it—that was how desperate some families were.

So the slow paced novel comes to a somber and almost peaceful ending—though it’s not really an ending. There is a somewhat incomplete ending, and it seems like the story could still go on. There seem to be more dark times ahead for the Joads, but maybe the changing tones will change again. The pace of the book shifted from slow and boring to eventful and hopeful, and maybe the sad and quiet mood will eventually become happier.

Public Work Projects

In the 1930s, the public works projects were large-scale projects like building dams and bridges and power plants, and it also provided employment for the masses of unemployed people in America. The Tennessee Valley Authority did just this. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was created to provide relief jobs too, and the Works Progress Administration provided relief to unemployed peoples until they could find jobs. The Social Security Act was another famous one--it was established to provide aid to people with disabilities, seniors, minors, and etc. Hoover also established many large Public Works Projects, but he was afraid that the people would rebel and that it would undermine the people's individual characteristics. He failed to see that those characteristics didn't matter much when the economy was falling apart.

If our society today have a huge public works project, it would have to provide many jobs--hundreds of thousands or millions. And I hear health care is an important topic nowadays too, so that should be worked on too.

Sources:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~fishback/The%20Impact%20of%20Relief%20and%20Public%20Works%20Programs%20on%20Socioeconomic%20Welfare%20During%20the%201930s.html

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=466

Dear Meg Whitman

Dear Meg Whitman,

 I know you keep making promises to fix California with your three main plans about creating jobs, cutting spending, and improving education. But all of your promises seem vague and they don't seem specific enough. While I agree with the ideas, I don't agree with the means of making them possible, because they don't exist.

Specifically, on your address about the issues of cutting government spending. I don't see how reducing the workforce would help your other plan about creating jobs--you contradict yourself! And if you want to fix the spending on California, first you have to fix the debt. The debt is--what is it now? Something over 40 billion dollars? 100 billion? The numbers are different in every place.

There are a bunch of businesses out there that are doing charity--like Pepsi and their Refresh Everything project. They're giving away millions. Why can't you cooperate with companies like that to make a difference? They can help pay off our debt, and perhaps eventually the whole country's. There are thousands of businesses out there like that, able to help out but not. Why not ask for their assistance?

Just something to think about.

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Sources: Meg Whitman Website, Meg on the record, Meg on Jobs, Meg on Spending, Meg on Education, Meg on Charter Schools, CBS News, California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, State of California Debt Affordability Report

Dust Bowl Sympathy

I think the novel definitely brings awareness to the problem, but not quite sympathy. I feel more immersed in the Joads' story more than sorry for them, and I feel like the story is not giving the real tragedies of the time. The Joads seem to run into a lot of luck on their journey, and it makes them seem less unfortunate, which makes me think that everyone wasn't as bad off as they looked. So I don't really feel like I can sympathize with the cast of the Grapes of Wrath, or the Dust Bowl farmers in general.

Reflection on Freedom and Structure

With the freedoms I've been given for Ampersand, I've chosen to create two pieces to submit, and within these pieces I've been able to write a lot and about what I want. The interview with my mentor is one of these pieces, and I got to select which questions to include. The photo essay I want to include lets me show off the project I created at Internship, so it makes me really happy and proud that I get to write it however I want. I wrote it with my own style and my own feelings, and that's a lot of freedom.

Among the structure I had to follow, there's a certain format for interviews that I know of, and the limitations on the number of captions on the photo essay really hinders what I really wanted to write about. I'm fine with the interview format, but I really wish I could write more captions to more photos. However, I was able to narrow down my "photos" to the essentials, so it was good enough. The captions for each were really long, too.