The Grapes Of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

Essay #1

In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck describes the community and economic struggle of normal Americans determined to defend their people. It captures the desperation and pain of the Great Depression. For example in chapter five we see the Great Depression emerge within the struggles of ownership of land with tenant farming, the effect it has on the country and the Joads as a whole, and the relationship to the American dream.

The struggle of ownership and land with tenant farming, in chapter five it describes the battle and hunger between wealth and poverty, the survival of life and facelessness and namelessness. The hunger to live life for the tenants is a struggle. The tenants seem to have no respect, they are treated poorly and their land, which they have no say to keep, is demolished in front of them. The tenants live life by eating and paying taxes until crops go bad and they have to borrow from the banks. The monsters hunger for life is on profit, they live life by breathing profit, they eat interest on money and if they don't get it they die (P.43ch5). The battle between big guy and little guy for example the tenants and owners. The tenants on the Oklahoma land are forced to move out of their land and proceed west. The tenants seem to be defenseless, when trying to stand up for themselves and the owners find someway to overtake that and overcome. The owners have the superiority over the tenants, as the tenants watch the owners' drive up to their land. There was a feeling of uneasiness coming from the tenants. It seemed as if the owners were kings "The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams..."(P.42ch5) as if the tenants were servants to the owners bowing down to them. The tenants new the land was poor, but they had hope, hope that next year would be a good year. "We can't depend on it. The bank - the monster has to have profit all the time." (P.44ch5). The monster is a creature that has some force of negative feeling, a threatening force also one who is highly successful is called a monster a connection to facelessness and namelessness. The bank's machines are described as the monster for the owners never seeing the man that has the power to demand such authority over land and lives of others. The machines are the reasons that the tenants are poor. The machines make profit from the land. The banks that own land send in people to drive tractor and destroy it.

The effect it has on the country and the Joads, leads to poverty. The technology in which the banks acquire to make money is the cause of being poor for the tenant farmers. The land that once barred fruit is no longer producing. It is now being profited due to the machines and demolished by tractors. . The Joads as well as other families were