Semester TWO: Honors Novel 2

The Great Depression brought about a lot of migration, many families began to migrate towards California to find jobs, and food. During the grapes of wrath we get to see two different prospective of this happening. In the novel we are introduced to the Joad family where we explore the different trials and tribulations they endured the great depression.

The Joad family lived on a farm in Oklahoma ,once the stock market crashed and the dust bowl era came about there was no chance for them to survive on there land. The dust bowl demolished the crops leaving there farm worthless. They began trying to sell prized possessions but the economy was so bad that people barely had money for food, so they couldn’t buy “luxury items”. Since there was no money coming in they were unable to pay the bank for their home which caused the house to be foreclosed.

Because of the dust bowl everyone was struggling to keep afloat. There was talk about better opportunities in San Diego so many families began to migrate
In the book we are shown a pattern of reality and exaggerated reality, it starts off with the reality of the 1930’s with a description of the scenery. “In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again. The next chapter zooms into the Joad family where we get a first hand view of a migrant family’s experience. “In the little houses the tenant people sifted their belongings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers, Picked over their possessions for the journey to the west. The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days. The men went into the barns and the sheds.

The way that this book was set up gives the reader both sides of the story. In the reality chapters of the book we get a first hand view of just how bad everything was during the 1930’s. In the zoomed out chapters we can make a connection between our life and how it could have been affected during that time period. I feel it was important for Steinbeck to write the book with this specific pattern because its easy for you to understand the theme of the book and also connect to the characters in order to understand the book as a whole. Having the reality, exaggerated reality pattern also kept the book interesting. There was always some kind of thinking happening between chapters as we learned background descriptive information about the reality of the great depressions, we also see some of what could have be reality of the great depression.