Harvest Gypsies Analysis

In his inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the tone for the upcoming half century when he confidently said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. In response to the economic collapse of the Great Depression, a bold and highly experimental fleet of government bureaus and agencies known as Roosevelt’s Alphabet Soup were created to service the programs of the New Deal and to provide recovery to the American people. The New Deal was one of the most ambitious programs in American history, with implications and government programs that can still be seen to this day. Through its enactment of social reform and conservation programs, the New Deal mounted radical policies that gave the federal government unprecedented power in the nation’s economy and society, however, the New Deal did not bring America out of the Great Depression and could be considered conservative in the context of the era, ultimately saving capitalism from collapsing in America.

      In his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck portrays the movement of a family of migrant workers, the Joads, from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Steinbeck's novel, though it is surprisingly lacking in surface-level symbolism, was "conceived [on] simultaneous levels of existence, ranging from socio-economic determinism to transcendent spirituality" (DeMott, xiii). One of the many levels on which this novel can be read is as a parallel to the stories of Christ and the Exodus (Louis Owens, John Steinbeck's Re-Vision of America, quoted in DeMott, xiii). Steinbeck intertwines allegories based on these two stories throughout his novel. Through

The bare land of California faced severe drought under the scorching sun, precious crops are harvest ready, scarcely diminishing without any growers around. However, a group of benevolent nomads approaches this dying land in hopes of living among it and healing it. Migrants from all around the world travel across countries, borders, and vast terrain. California, being a famous location today in the United States, is also set to be the heaviest drought environment with very large farmlands. This land would have deteriorated, but it was healed in the most mundane way, agricultural farming. Steinbeck introduces the mere impact that these migrants they’ve had in the country, but in most cases, it’s not seen like that. In “The Harvest Gypsies”, Steinbeck writes a deliberate passage to assure that these migrants are not of the country's problem. He denounces prejudice views among them, includes the issues they face with the law, incorporates their unprecedented arrival, and alludes California’s importance in migrant labor for agricultural economics.

The 1930’s were a decade of great change politically, economically, and socially. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wore raw the nerves of the people, and our true strength was shown. From it arose John Steinbeck, a storyteller of the Okies and their hardships. His books, especially The Grapes of Wrath, are reflections of what really went on in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck did not write about what he had previously read, he instead wrote what he experienced through his travels with the migrant workers. “His method was not to present himself notebook in hand and interview people. Instead he worked and traveled with the migrants as one of them, living as they did and arousing no suspicion from employers militantly alert against

One of the greatest novels of all time, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, is a well-known American classic. Renowned for its portrayal of the struggle of migrant families during the Dust Bowl; the novel not only details the Joad family’s 1500 mile journey from Oklahoma to California but that of all migrant workers. The Joad’s travels reflect the hardships migrant workers had to face while trying to survive in a country that hated and feared them. The novel was published in 1939, and one year later it was made into a motion picture. John Ford’s film, also titled The Grapes of Wrath, was a major success, and a marvelous adaptation. However, while visually satisfying, the film does not convey the depth or intensity of Steinbeck’s classic. Neither a loose, nor truly close adaptation, The Grapes of Wrath falls into the category of an intermediate film. The Grapes of Wrath fails to convey a vital theme of the novel, the relationships cultivated not just between the Joad’s, but between all of the migrant families.

John Steinbeck’s acclaimed novel, The Grapes of Wrath, embodies his generation’s horrific tragedy. John Steinbeck’s writing gives insight on the devastating effects of the Dust Bowl on thousands of families and those who helped them. While Steinbeck's novel focuses on the Joad's family journey, he also includes writing of the general struggle of many families at the time. In John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, the usage of the term “Okies” degrades the workers, while the personification of the cars help depict the struggle of the journey, to exemplify the adaptation the migrant workers had to make to survive the new life.

”The Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s plays an important and complicated role in the way Americans talk about the history of poverty and public policy in their country.” (Gregory, James N.) The Great Depression and Dust Bowl caused wide spread poverty in the United States. Things were going well for farmers even though the Great Depression was going on; however, that quickly changed with the development of a substantial drought. This caused people to flee out west, find new land and an income. The Dust Bowl destroyed the subsistence of many and further divested the economy of the United States.

The United States encountered many ordeals during the Great Depression (1929-1939). Poverty, unemployment and despair clouded the “American Dream” and intensified the urgency for solutions to address and control the nationwide damage. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the New Deal to detoxify the nation of its suffering. It can be argued that the New Deal was ineffective due to the inability to end the Great Depression with its short-term solutions and created more problems, however; it was successful in regards to providing direct relief for the needy, economic recovery and some structural reform for the majority of the general public in the severity of the Great Depression.

Over the course of a student’s life under the American education system, they will, without fail, read at least two books by California writer and possible communist, John Steinbeck. The longer, sadder and more proletarian book, Grapes of Wrath, tells the tale of the great migration of Midwestern farmers traveling to California during the 1930s. Grapes of Wrath was not Steinbeck’s first venture into the tragedies that faced migrant farmers once they reached California- he had previously written Starvation Under the Orange Trees in 1938. Steinbeck uses these two works to describe the atrocities that migrants’ faces and place blame on land owners and corporations and declaring the government the saviors of the workers. Opposing Steinbeck’s arguments is Keith Windschuttle, who uses his article, Myth of the Oakies, to claim that Steinbeck is over exaggerating nearly everything in Grapes of Wrath, from the amount of migrants that moved to California to the reality that faced the migrants in California, and that Grapes of Wrath is actually a novel praising communism.

The late 1930s were a time of great suffering and uncertainty in the United States. The country was crippled by effects of the Great Depression; the result was a massive decline in jobs and economic stability that dramatically impacted both rural and urban communities. Millions of Americans were out of work, unable to support their families. State organizations and charities were unable to meet the growing needs of the people and many were left to fend for themselves. The Great Depression brought with it a legitimate, tangible fear about the future of America and its citizens. Upon the outcry of the American people a “New Deal” was struck giving the citizens of America a lifeline of hope in the ever-growing State. The New Deal was a succession of programs, organizations and laws, enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, directly addressing the issues of jobs, welfare and uncertainty through direct federal involvement. The creators of the New Deal worked across party lines to reshape the norms of state involvement whilst making a great legislative effort to turn the declining economy around. The New Deal reshaped the federal government’s relationship with its citizens in a time of economic uncertainty helping to grow the State in a time of peace.

The unconventionally written intercalary chapters of Steinbeck's novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, are designed to show the readers a view of economic depression and social aspects of America during this time period. Steinbeck tells the reader about the situation through a macroscopic point of view, when he writes the intercalary chapters. It is through these intercalary chapters that Steinbeck tells us about the struggle of many migrant farmers who are pushed out of their homes and start to live their lives on the road, while trying to find places for them to work. Between each of these intercalary chapters are narrative chapters where Steinbeck gives the readers a microscopic view of the situation, by giving us an example of one of the migrant

John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, depicts a migrant farming family in the 1930s. During this time, life revolved around the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, making circumstances difficult for almost everyone involved, especially those who had little. This time of drought and despair caused people to lose hope in everything they’ve ever known, even themselves, but those who did not, put their hope in the “promised land” of California. Here, the grass was thought to be truly greener on the other side. The Joad’s did not get so lucky, however, as Steinbeck’s novel describes the family’s pilgrimage and the hardships faced on their journey. The novel, a romantic gospel and naturalistic epic, presents an Exodus by the family, going from “I” to “we”, home to homeless, and selfish to loving.

Steinbeck similarly examines the poor’s resentment of the upper class through the interactions between the migrant farmers and the upper class. Steinbeck captures the ire of the migrants at the wastefulness and selfishness of the upper class by showing that “in the

For my project, my goal was to illustrate the sorrow and grief many farmers and their families experienced as they were evicted from their homes and land; due to the tremendous impact of the Dust Bowl. Additionally, I wanted to demonstrate the struggles of their journey westward toward California, where they sought work to provide for their families who usually were already starving, exhausted, and grieving for what they lost back home. I chose these particular lines from John Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies since they encompass the entire motif that I decided to express. Steinbeck’s lines clearly explain the migrants’ backgrounds hearty, self-sufficient American farmers; men and women who are “resourceful and intelligent” (Steinbeck, 5). He

John Steinbeck was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist whose writing was greatly influenced by America’s migrant classes, particularly during the period of the Great Depression. Born in 1902, in Salinas, California, Steinbeck had a comfortable childhood and upbringing. He discovered his passion for writing at an early age and eventually went on to enroll in Stanford University. It was during this time, mostly during his summer vacations, that Steinbeck found the inspiration for his novels. He spent his summer working as a laborer in a sugar factory, in mills and worked as a ranch hand. He closely observed the migrant workers who traveled from ranch to ranch through the Salinas Valley, and gained first-hand experience from the laborers