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The Joad Family In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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The book The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family who are migrating towards the west because there is no hope to be found if they stay in Oklahoma. Steinbeck follows the Joads mostly through the book, but there are some chapters that don't fit in with the normal Joad family. They are choppy, fast paced chapters that don't seem to have any correlation with the Joad family, but these chapters provide steinbeck's view on what is happening. These chapters are usually referred to as intercalary chapters and they mostly talk about the other migrants apart from the Joad family, and what kind of struggles they were going through because of what the banks had done to them. Steinbeck had a purpose to these chapters and the book as a whole which was …show more content…

We don't see this in one specific chapter but it is seen all thought the book. One example of this is when the tents are trying to reason with the landowners that they barely can make any money and support their kids, and that he shouldn't kick them out, “What do you want us to do? We can't take less share of the crop – we're half starved now. The kids are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn and' ragged. If all the neighbors weren't the same, we'd be ashamed to go to meeting”(Steinbeck 22). This quote talks about how hungry the children were and that if they were to get kicked off their land they would be seriously in trouble. The landowners then respond to the migrants cries by saying, “We can't depend on it. The bank – the monster – has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.”(Steinbeck 22). What the landowners are saying is that the banks are monsters and they always need money, and if they don't kick them off the land they wouldn't be getting any money and the banks would kick them off their land. This causes the landowners to make inhuman actions. This is because they justify it by saying that if they don't do this someone else will do it to them. So it comes back to the point that the banks are the reason the migrants are …show more content…

We see this point show up very prominently close to the ending of the book. Steinbeck talks about how the wrath of the people were growing and boiling, “and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”(Steinbeck 238). Steinbeck explains that the wrath of the migrants are growing and boiling, and that they can't hold it back anymore. This is foreshadowing a future event a rebellion. We can see this clearly where Steinbeck writes, “And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it.”(Steinbeck 284). What this means is that because the banks were greedy and taking land away from the migrants, the migrants did not have enough money to support and feed themselves which lead to the migrants becoming hungry. As the migrants became hungry they become angry which will soon lead to rebellion. The banks didn't know this though and soon it would be too late to do anything. This corresponds with my main point that the anger will boil and turn into rebellion because Steinbeck states that the banks were working to their own doom, which is going to be the migrants

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