Assignment: Post comments to the following questions and reply to classmate responses.
Many characters in The Grapes of Wrath are at the bottom end of the social ladder, their language is often vile, and their behavior is sometime as coarse as is their language. What was Steinbeck's purpose in portraying this group of Americans? What would be the effect on the reader if the Joads spoke "proper" English and did not curse?
Half of the chapters in The Grapes of Wrath focus on the dramatic westward journey of the Joad family, while the others possess a broader scope, providing a more general picture of the migration of thousands of Dust Bowl farmers. Discuss this structure. Why might Steinbeck have chosen it? How do the two kinds of chapters reinforce each other? How would the elimination of those chapters affect the meaning and impact of the novel?
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-I think Steinbeck's purpose is to expose the way that these people lived when he wrote this. No one payed attention to them, so i think he just wanted to expose them, almost as their voice, saying "We are here, and we need help".
ReplyDelete-They wouldn't get the same effect that we get from Joad as we read. We wouldn't get that rawness of how it actually is if he spoke properly.
-I feel like one is describing the history (sort of) of ALL of the Dust Bowl farmers, while the other chapters are describing the impact of it on one particular family, the Joads. I think this way Steinbeck shows us that it isn't just a story, and I think that is what he is trying to tell us by using this structure. If you eliminated the inner chapters the story would be just a story and no one would have even known or cared. However, if you eliminated the chapters about the Joads, then it would just be another history story, and who cares because you wouldn't have to read this book to understand that the Dust Bowl farmers had to move west to California. You could get that from a history book.
I felt like the Joads family was like a real life family who lived out on the farm and had to work hard for to make a living. Education obviously was not very popular at the time since families needed help around the farm to make money to support themselves. Joads not speaking "proper" english seems to be the right fit for this novel. It makes characters more life like and relatable. This sort of gives an illusion of how life was and because they didnt speak "proper" english, they weren’t the "perfect" character. For example, having something that isnt realistic is equivalent it to being un-relatable. Being a big business owner but then losing all his money and having to move. That is un-relatable because average people are not large business owners. The more relatable would be the down to earth people that others see everyday and is able to connect with.
ReplyDeleteThe description chapters i felt were there to inform more than anything. It gave a large amount of details about the surrounding meaning like what was going on at the time. Its similar to a newspaper like a national view of what is going on in the world. It also introduces the family into a new situation. After each time the “news” was given, the family had to find out ways to solve the problem or avoid it. For me, these chapters I had to re-read a few times to fully understand what exactly was going on then I would be able to follow the story line better. I believe the author put it in here to help guide the story but also to show that all of these things were happening and not everyone had realized it at that point in time.
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ReplyDelete1. I think that the reason John Steinbeck decided to make the Joad family vile and improper was so that he could show the typical family back then. This is the way the people from the country talked, very ignorant. If the Joads spoke proper, the reader would probably not have taken them seriousy. They would not have seemed like actual farmers from that time period, or any time period for that matter.
ReplyDelete2. I think the interchapters describe the general farmers because John Steinbeck did not want the reader to forget that this was really occuring. Its not just a story. It provides an accurate account of the journeys and lives of many Americans across the country to California. I think he used the Joad family to show the reader in depth the pain and sorrow those people actually had to go through. he wanted the reader to connect with the one family so that it would be easier to understand what the interchapters were explaining. If he took out the interchapters, the reader would have a hard time figuring out the background and history of the causes and effects of those families' lives. If he took out the Joads', the reader would have probably seen the book as an informational book and they would not have realy been able to connect the book to their own lives and experiences.
In my opinion I think that people like the Joads were brought up in a way that they didnt have to care about what others thought about them, they just tended to their crops and that was it. I think the cursing was mean't to portray the fact that they were farmers and nothing more, there lack of education is made evident throughout the story.
ReplyDeleteI think Steinbeck uses the two different kind of chapters to advance the story, in one way it shows us how little things can be symbolic and it also shows us how this was not only happening to the Joads. If there was only chapters on the Joads then we wouldnt know the full picture, we wouldnt know what was going on with other families. The inner chapters also add something for us to think about and look out for later on in the book.
I feel that Steinbeck choose these type of people because they were the type of people who were affected most by the economic horrors of the time, and they were just plain people who the average citizen could relate to. they were the social group who were hit the hardest by the crisis, and they were the ones who needed their story told.
ReplyDeleteIf the Joads were to speak "proper" English in this book, it would lessen how realistic the characters were. The people actually spoke like that, therefore Steinbeck wrote the book like that. Although it makes the characters seem unintelligent(maybe just uneducated), it is portraying it how they actually were, letting people know that the Joads were everyday people just like everybody else.
I think that Steinbeck chose the structure that he did because it lets the reader know that this wasn't one situation that happened to a few people, it was something taking place throughout the country. This is vital to the understanding of the story, making these chapters very important to the book as a whole. It makes it seem as though the Joads are the same as everybody else in the story, which reinforces the idea of them being average citizens. If these chapters to be removed from the book, it not only would subtract some of the artistic qualities of the book, it would remove the power that it has behind it in showing how widespread the suffering was.
In the terms of their style of speaking I think Steinbeck wanted the Jaods to be as realistic and relatable as possible. He wanted to show the average farmer family and how the Great Depression ruined their lives. If they spoke proper English it would seem like they're highly educated and should be in a white collar position and not hard labor. Readers wouldn't take this issue seriously enough if it weren't realistic enough for them.
ReplyDeleteThe structure of the chapters it to move the plot along with the chapters about the family, and the inter chapters kind of sum of the personalities of the majority of people in certain situations. Again it gives a realistic and universally understood feeling because it shows that the Joads were not the only ones going through economic crisis. I think this structure is important because it gives a sort or unity to all suffering people, in that they are going through it together and that they aren't necessarily without support. It also gave reasons for why the system was how it was, and putting in his own political opinion which influences the reader. If these chapters weren't included it would probably be more difficult for the reader to understand the severity of the situation in the South because it wouldn't explain that the same thing is happening to thousands of others.
Several people mentioned that the Joad family was mostly uneducated. Just because the Joads lack education, does that make them ignorant? People also have mentioned that they were "just farmers", does that make them an unimportant group of Americans to write about?
ReplyDeleteNick, it's interesting how you describe the inner chapters as artistic. Okenya, I like how you explain that the novel without the inner chapters would just be fiction, and the inner chapters without the plot would just be informational. True! It seems like they work best together.
I think everyone is right in saying that Steinbeck's portrayal of the characters and their language makes them both realistic and relatable.
I think that Steinebk wanted to portray the Joad family as real people so that people who had been effected by the depression could relate and connect more with the book. I think that if Steinbeck hadn't wrote the dialogue the way he did and included profanity, then the book would be really boring. It wouldn't be as effective to the country and many people wouldn't have realized or believed that soemthing so horrible was happening to people who basically have nothing to hold on to but each other.
ReplyDeleteIf Steinbeck hadn't used those inner chapters, I don't think it would have been that much of a difference. Him using those inner chapters though gives you more of what the other families are going through instead of just the Joad family and how hard it really was for other people. He did that to get his message out there that this was actually happening.
The vast majority of Americans are not "proper" and don't speak "proper" english. Also, he was targeting the audience of migrant workers because they were the group of people effected the most. If he wrote about the rich people in California, it wouldn't really make the same point. It would be unrealistic to display the Joad family as educated proper Americans, because they simply weren't. By showing them for who they really were, Steinbeck was able to make his book relate-able, and believable.
ReplyDeleteSteinbeck's use of alternating chapters between the Joads journey, and the more general results of the dust bowl gave The Grapes of Wrath a very intriguing structure. First, it made the book much more enjoyable to read. Reading on and on about the Joads would have become dreadfully boring. More importantly though, the inner chapters make the situation more relat-able to everyone in the country. The broadness of the chapters makes the reader understand that a plethora of people were going through the same situations as the Joad family. It also gave Steinbeck a place to really vocalize his opinions on the migrant workers, Americas capitalist government, businesses, ect.