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Ideas for a literary analysis essay over the grapes of wrath
Literary devices in the grapes of wrath
Literary devices in the grapes of wrath
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“Those who overcome great challenges will be changed, and often in unexpected ways. For our struggles enter our lives as unwelcome guests, but they bring valuable gifts. And once the pain subsides, the gifts remain. These gifts are life's true treasures, bought at great price, but cannot be acquired in any other way” (Steve Goodier, Author). The themes displayed in both John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle revolve around the idea of overcoming struggles to learn lessons and achieve goals. The Grapes of Wrath tells a story of the Joad family living during the Great Depression and having to travel to California to work and survive after losing their land in Oklahoma. On their journey they encounter various …show more content…
Although negative situations are constantly thrown at them, the Joads and the Walls remain determined to make advances in their lives. For example, the Joad family is physically forced off their farm and into financial instability. This causes them to travel to California in hopes of finding work, but instead endure many hardships. Even after undergoing death, hostility, and instability, the Joad’s sense of perseverance assists them to continue their journey, no matter what happened. The Walls, especially the children, remain determined to find self-happiness. Due to the Jeanette's Father’s alcoholism addiction, the family is involuntary moving from place to place to find a balanced life. “If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim (Walls, 66). This quote examines how when Jeanette grows older, she realizes that she must become independent and through determination she moves to New York and continues what she loves to do, write. The attribute, determination, displays how both families persevere through their personal hardships and find success and glee. There are many more attributes similar to determination, like faith, that help the two families on their …show more content…
For the two families the idea of faith shifts between each other and oneself. For instance, within The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family utilizes their family bond and by finding faith in each other they are able to survive their hardships. Tom Joad, the main character, is able to find strength through faith when he travels with his family to California, where they suffer death and dangers, just to find employment. In The Glass Castle, Walls experiences a childhood filled with troubled parents, and constant moving. As she grows older, Jeanette gains a sense of faith in herself, almost independent-like, and through this is able to move past her family issues and focus on her own needs. “Until then, when I thought of writers, what first came to mind was Mom, hunched over her typewriter, clattering away on her novels and plays and philosophies of life and occasionally receiving a personalized rejection letter. But a newspaper reporter, instead of holing up in isolation, was in touch with the rest of the world. What the reporter wrote influenced what people thought about and talked about the next day; he knew what was really going on. I decided I wanted to be one of the people who knew what was really going on” (Walls, 204). This quote exhibits the transition from faith for the future into faith in Jeanette’s self-abilities. Although they differ in meaning between the two books, both
In the novel, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls recounts her childhood as a tale of harsh struggle and of conflicting viewpoints. The set of ideals which she developed as an individual along with those instilled within her by her parents seemingly rival those purported by society and the developed world, creating an internal struggle greater than any of her physical conflicts. Examples of such conflicts involve the abstract areas of race, wealth versus poverty, and idealism versus realism.
As an intelligent and dynamic protagonist, Jeannette shows the reader her opinions on her impoverished life style. The novel begins when she is only three years old and continues into her adulthood, providing insight into her mind. As a child, Jeannette is adventurous, wild-hearted, and Rex's favorite child because of her forgiving nature and willingness to trust in him, despite his destructive nature. In the beginning of the novel Walls states, "He told me I was his favorite child, but he made me promise not to tell Lori or Brian or Maureen. It was our secret. 'I swear, honey, there are times when I think you're the only one around who still has faith in me,' he said. 'I don't know what I'd do if you ever lost it.' I told him that I would never lose faith in him. And I promised myself I never would" (78-79). Jeannette, chooses to be optimistic and positive even though it is clear her family is far from being well off. Throughout her early childhood, she ignores her father's drunken escapades, and thinks of him as a loving father and excellent teacher of the wild. It isn't until her junior year of high school that she realizes the indisputable flaws her father has. She begins to resent his constant drinking and empty promises, the most important being the Glass Castle, he promised to build. Yet Rex never openly admits to it or allows his flaws to be discussed.
People just don’t seem to give up, they continue fighting till the very end rather than lay down and succumb to the challenge faced. In “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck uses symbolism and religious allusions as unifying devices to illustrate the indomitable nature of the human spirit.
Throughout the novel, The Grapes of Wrath there are intercalary chapters. The purpose of these chapters are to give the readers insight and background on the setting, time, place and even history of the novel. They help blend the themes, symbols, motifs of the novel, such as the saving power of family and fellowship, man’s inhumanity to man, and even the multiplying effects of selfishness. These chapters show the social and economic crisis flooding the nation at the time, and the plight of the American farmer becoming difficult. The contrast between these chapters helps readers look at not just the storyline of the Joad family, but farmers during the time and also the condition of America during the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses these chapters to show that the story is not only limited to the Joad family,
The novel The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, brings to the surface many of the the struggles and darker aspects of American life through the perspective of a growing girl who is raised in a family with difficulties financially and otherwise. This book is written as a memoir. Jeannette begins as what she remembers as her first memory and fills in important details of her life up to around the present time. She tells stories about her family life that at times can seem to be exaggerated but seemed normal enough to her at the time. Her parents are portrayed to have raised Jeannette and her three siblings in an unconventional manner. She touches on aspects of poverty, family dynamics, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse from
Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, has most definitely responded to Faulkner’s outreach, and responded very strongly at that. She has more than accomplished her duty as a writer. Her memoir The Glass Castle is one of the most honest, raw, emotion and heart-filled pieces of literature ever to grace humanity. In this memoir, Walls uses many various rhetorical strategies to fulfill her duty as an author and embrace Faulkner’s message. Throughout the book, every range of emotion can be felt by the reader, due in large part to the expert use of Walls’ rhetorical strategies. These rhetorical strategies paint such vivid images that the reader can feel the sacrifice, the pity, and the love of Walls’ story as if they were standing alongside Jeannette herself.
In the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author's earliest memory is her injury at the age of three, and in this memory she is all but unhappy. Jeannette's childhood was full of inconveniences. The Walls family had a hard time conforming to society and shaping their future for success. Rex and Rose Mary had different morals than others when it came to raising their children: Brain, Lori, Maureen and of course Jeannette. During her childhood, Jeannette was dealt with hardships, but showed maturity and independence throughout it.
One obstacle Jeannette overcomes is unstable home life. The Wall’s family moves frequently because some family members were worried someone might be after them for money. When the family started “Doing the skedaddle.” (17)-their dad referred as a movement of fleeing very slowly and sneaky. According to this philosophy, the family experienced moving outside of their home in search for prosperity. The parents made it seem like an adventure instead of escaping their problems. For example, they would talk about gold and the prospector design to give a sense of hope. However, in terms of stopping at a place to live, it was always run down. Unfortunately, conditions worsened in terms of not having beds for the Walls’ children but improvised with boxes. Another example includes the house at 93 Little Hobart Street, Welch, West Virginia. Some problems that arose in the house were rotten pieces of wood, no toilet system but instead improvised with a bucket in the kitchen, no running water, and minimal electricity when they make the payments. A hole was dug for the glass castle foundation but garbage piled inside as a backup plan because trash collection fees exhorted their income. Today, society is determined to escape lower conditio...
Of all the diametrically opposed forces that hold sway on human consciousness, one dichotomy reigns supreme, altruism versus egoism. As such, this division is often explored in arts of all forms, literature in particular. In the context of American culture as a whole, perhaps no book better explores this dichotomy than John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, in which an oklahoman family is forced to migrate to california in order to escape the dust bowl. Indeed, as most who have explored a concept fully, Steinbeck chooses to venerate one half of the dichotomy, that side being altruism, to the point of iconoclasm. Throughout the novel, one is continuously assured of Steinbeck’s communist world view.
Jeannette Walls reluctantly wrote Glass Castle in an attempt to show that even those with very different backgrounds and cultures really aren't all that different after all. Walls wrote of ridiculous situations and her experiences while growing up with a family that lacked the regular structural culture of other families, which included qualities such as morality, integrity, and a basic knowledge and feeling of obligation to follow the law of the land. Her parents both held values that were unique to each one of them as they lived their lives strongly expressing, through actions and words, that the normal values of other people simply weren’t right. Jeanette’s parents, though unconventional, were just as loving, if not more loving towards their kids as other parents. I think the reason the family was so strange, was simply because of the parents’ values that they taught their kids. The values your parents raise you with can greatly affect your future, and who you become as a person; this is what I can relate to. I’ve become conscious of how the values I grew up on evolved into more of a belief system, if not a stubborn pride-driven ability to deny handouts or help from people. Add this characteristic of mine to the fact that my parents wouldn’t allow me to drive until I turned eighteen, the fact that I lived on an isolated
Jeannette got burned by fire on page 1, as the result of her being left alone, and will have a scar for the rest of her life. The children met lots of perverts and prostitutes over the years that most likely scarred them; Jeanette got sexually assaulted multiple times, and their parents did not seem bothered by this. This was not an easy situation for them to experience growing up, but they survived and flourished in despite of their harsh living conditions. If the Walls children were given a choice they probably would not have preferred the upbringing they got, but nevertheless, they became productive members of society eventually. The constant moving brought the siblings closer together, and made them have to trust each other. If the Walls children had been taken to a foster home, the siblings might have been split up, or they might not have done well being cooped up in a house and not traveling and exploring, instead going to school. They would have been brought up differently and may not have turned out as well as they did.
Oftentimes, life is a treacherous and unforgiving place; coincidentally the underlying message of both “The Glass Castle” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” These texts include a series of challenges to the lives of two very different families in unique time periods. In order to survive, these families must overcome the challenges of addiction, poverty, and disparity in their own ways. Steinbeck’s, “The Grapes of Wrath,” details the lives of the Joads, Oklahoma farmers in the Great Depression of the 1930s; who travel west in search of a better life. A sense of community unifies the families and keeps the Joads together as a whole. Walls’s memoir “The Glass Castle,” tells of the highly unstable and nomadic life of protagonist Jeannette through the early stages of her life. The Walls children manage to prosper in their own individual ways, stemming from decades of suffering and adversity. The Joads and Walls’s alike share characteristics that help them get
...ndurance of poverty, as we witness how Walls has turned her life around and told her inspiring story with the use of pathos, imagery, and narrative coherence to inspire others around her (that if she can do it, so can others). Jeannette made a huge impact to her life once she took matters into her own hands and left her parents to find out what life has in store for her and to prove to herself that she is a better individual and that anything is possible. Despite the harsh words and wrongful actions of Walls’ appalling parents who engage her through arduous experiences, she remained optimistic and made it through the most roughest and traumatic obstacles of her life at the age of three. Walls had always kept her head held high and survived the hardships God put upon her to get to where she is today; an author with a best selling novel to tell her bittersweet story.
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, a fictitious migrant family, the Joads, travel west in search of a new life away from the tragedies of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. Along the way, Steinbeck adds a variety of minor characters with whom the Joads interact. Steinbeck created these minor characters to contrast with the Joad’s strong will power and to reflect man’s fear of new challenges, and to identify man’s resistance to change. Three minor characters who fulfill this role are Muley Graves, Connie Rivers, and the tractor driver.
In the book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, many characters develop and change in various ways. Steinbeck portrays Tom Joad as a killer in the beginning of the book. After many deaths and challenges Tom changes from being a selfish man who only thinks about himself and his own family, to someone that stands up for others, and helps other families that are in need of help.