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.