A Struggle for Human Dignity The Grapes of Wrath, directed by John Ford, is about Tom Joad, and the struggles of his family. Tom’s family are farmers who get kicked off their land, and have to search for work in California. The journey is a hard one because the road is long, and nice people are few. This is a story of a struggle for human dignity, both internally and externally. The first occurrence that brings human dignity into question is when the bank and big business send tractors to tear down the farmers’ houses and run them off their property. These corporations displace several families without care. When Muley asks who is responsible for the order to destroy their homes, he isn’t given a straight answer. The next event happens when …show more content…
He brings word that the town’s people are coming to burn down the settler's camp, and their family needs to leave quickly. The stress of his sister’s husband abandoning her, and the people in the town conspiring to commit arson makes Tom mad. This is expressed by Lisa Cornwell’s analysis of the film: “When Tom tells Ma of his growing anger against the system, Ma replies, ‘You gotta keep clear, the family’s breaking up. You gotta keep clear’”. Tom’s mother doesn’t want him to let anger turn him into a mean person like it has others of society. Ma’s words keep Tom grounded throughout the film, and he tries not to do anything …show more content…
However, when they get down the road, the car is stopped by an angry mob. The people don’t want them there because the city is filled with others in the same situation. It is rude of the mob to deny them entry into the city, it escalates when they shout that they better not see them until the next picking season. These people show no compassion for a starving, down-trodden family just because they are farmers looking for work, and their town is already filled with other families in the same situation. When they leave, they find another possible place to work. However, the Keen Ranch isn’t all the Joads were hoping it would be. The first occurrence here is after they first arrive, Tom has to keep telling the man who works there his family's last name and size even though he told the worker the exact same information just three minutes before. The people who run the ranch only care about the people's ability to work, they don’t care enough about them as people to even learn their names. The second occurrence at the Keen Ranch is when Tom goes to see about the ruckus at the front gate. When he starts walking he is stopped by one of the deputies and told to go back to his cabin. By telling Tom that he can’t take a walk that deputy is telling Tom that he doesn’t have any basic human rights because his family are only workers
Finally becoming convinced that life is unfair for his people, Tom decides to leave the family, find the union men, and work with them.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck had many comparisons from the movie and the book. In 1939, this story was to have some of the readers against the ones that kept the American people in poverty held responsible for their actions. This unique story was about the Joad’s family, who were migrant workers looking for a good decent job. They were also farmers from Oklahoma that are now striving to find some good work and success for their family in California. This novel was one of Steinbeck’s best work he has ever done. It was in fact an Academy Award movie in 1940. Both the movie and the novel are one of Steinbeck’s greatest masterpieces on both the filmmaking and the novel writing. Both the novel and film are mainly the same in the beginning of the story and towards the end. There were some few main points that Steinbeck took out from the book and didn’t mention them in the movie. “The Grapes of Wrath is a
In conclusion the Grapes of Wrath is a literary masterpiece that portrays the struggles of man as he overcomes the adversity of homelessness, death, and the wrath of prejudice. Steinbeck fully explores each faucet coherently within the boundaries of the Joad family’s trials and
The novel Grapes of Wrath was one of the first monumental American stories because of the setting, which is the great depression. It followed the working class of America, which at the time it came out was when the working class was becoming more common then the upper class. The whole point of the novel was to show the people who were the workers of America’s economy struggle deeply. The readers of the text appreciated the realistic factors of the novel, and Tom Joade was a great example for those who wanted to help others. He was someone who only cared about others safety, and even though he had done some bad things in the past, he was still a caring man. The moral behind Tom’s character is that even if someone has a troubled past, it does not matter about their past, but instead it matters about their actions in the present.
drop their life and move to a different state. When they arrived in California they were not
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck followed the struggle of farmers recovering from the 1930’s Dust Bowl and accepting their new identities as migrants. Throughout the book Steinbeck used detached diction, a mocking tone, and pathos to point out the social vices that plagued the migrants in hopes of potentially making people angry enough to cause change.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John Steinbeck, which focuses on an Oklahoman family that is evicted from their farm during an era of depression caused by the Dust Bowl. The Joad family alongside thousands of other refugees (also affected by the dirty thirties) migrates west towards California seeking employment and a new home. John Steinbeck’s purpose for writing this novel was to inform his audience of how many of their fellow Americans were being mistreated and of the tribulations they faced in order to attain regain what they once had. As a result, The Grapes of Wrath triggered its audience’s sympathy for the plight of the Dust Bowl farmers and their families.
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most influential books in American History, and is considered to be his best work by many. It tells the story of one family’s hardship during the Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The Joads were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness and morals; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. When the big drought came it forced them to sell the land they had lived on since before anyone can remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned. He learns his family has moved in with his uncle John and decides to travel a short distance to see them. He arrives only to learn they are packing up their belongings and moving to California, someplace where there is a promise of work and food. This sets the Joad family off on a long and arduous journey with one goal: to survive.
After Tom is done explaining the list to Mr. Jenkins, he goes down to the “little Chinese restaurant” to have his dinner and potentially look for possible candidates to take home to his parents. While Tom is sitting down to enjoying his ice-cream soda, a big muscular man comes up to him requesting about the job that is available on his farm. Tom politely declines to say, "My father… doesn’t want a couple of men. He just wants one” (Ross 226). Tom shows his new earning maturity here because most young children his age would be frightened if not terrified of the huge man standing in front of them, but Tom just declines as if he is a famous lawyer from a big city.
This final verse explains what Tom says when he is leaving the family so that they don’t have an extra mouth to feed. When he leaves, after killing a second man, he tells his mom that he plans to carry on Casy’s plans of unionization. He says that he will be everywhere that the migrant farm workers, his people, are starving and being treated unfairly.
Tom Joad experiences many struggles in The Grapes of Wrath. Due to his struggles, he undergoes an immense change that causes him from being unconcerned and impassive to being contemplative and expressive. The journey with Casy and his family affects how he achieves success to become a true, strong character. With his responsibility of taking care of the family, he carries great burden and doubtful decisions of leading them to California. Throughout the journey, he faces trials and sufferings that lead him to have an inner conflict with himself in order for his family to have the golden opportunity to live prosperously in the scarce but hopeful land. His moments of feeling helplessness and vulnerability in the position of a deterred migrant,
John Steinbeck wrote the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 to rouse its readers against those who were responsible for keeping the American people in poverty. The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, migrant farmers from Oklahoma traveling to California in search of an illusion of prosperity. The novel's strong stance stirred up much controversy, as it was often called Communist propaganda, and banned from schools due to its vulgar language. However, Steinbeck's novel is considered to be his greatest work. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and later became an Academy Award winning movie in 1940. The novel and the movie are both considered to be wonderful masterpieces, epitomizing the art of filmmaking and novel-writing.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
The cultivation of the American identity and American heroes has been a long arduous task that has resulted in a staggering amount of diversity. Most of heroes contain some similar traits, upholding a type of morality, the protection of what is deemed good, and the implementation of the American identity. However, these are broad themes that can be manipulated to represent a myriad of values or actions that could not be carried out by other American heroes. This level of diversity and contrast can be seen in Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith, and Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck. Both of these texts contain elements that can be loosely tied together, but overall the type of heroes that are characterised are incompatible,
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.