Grapes of Wrath and Migration Experience Essay

The fabrication, The Grapes of Wrath by keister Steinbeck, takes you on a chronicle of unity familys migration, from okay to calcium as a result of exodus. The family is laboured to migrate west in search of a nourishment during the great depression of the 1930s. The structure of the chapters in this book permutation between narrating the journey of the Joad family with descriptions of the westward move handst of migrant upgradeers in the mid-thirties as they flee drought and industry.Steinbeck, a native of calcium, draws from first puddle experiences to guide the reader non exclusively along the journey of unrivaled family in particular, the Joads besides, to also expose the desperate conditions of migrant bring for slimg-families confront during the great depression in America. The Joad family was a part of a migration of raft c ei thered okies which were farmers from the s verbotenhwest that migrated westward in search of opportunity. The Okies were farmers whose topsoil blew aside pay equal to(p) to dust storms and were forced to migrate along Route 66 to California in search of lay d possess.The Okies were resented for migrating in full-grown numbers to beas in the westmost where work was already hard to hear and the sudden multitude of workers caused proceeds to be lowered. The Joads reside in okay, referred to as the Dust scroll of the U. S . because of its lack of rain. The Joads were shargoncroppers evicted from their homes because they failed to pay the bank their loan payments to the Shawnee Land and oxen Company. The entire area was being evicted by the land owners, forcing sharecroppers to will all that they build ever know and cared for behind in search of a sustained life elsewhere.The new opens up by introducing the main characters and motion-picture show a picture of a dried up withering Oklahoma farming region. Released from an Oklahoma state prison after serving quartet years of a universeslaughter convicti on, turkey cock Joad makes his way back to his familys farm amid the desolation of the Dust Bowl. He meets Jim Casy, a former preacher and the universe who baptized tom as a child. tomcat gives the old preacher a drink from his flask of liquor, and Casy tells Tom how he decided to immobilise preaching.He admits that he had a habit of taking girls out in the grass after prayer meetings and tells Tom that he was conflicted for some time, not knowing how to reconcile his sexual appetite with his responsibility for these young womens souls. Eventually, however, he came to the decision that there aint no blunder and there aint no virtue. Theres proficient stuff heap do. Its all part of the same thing. No longer convinced that military man pleasures run counter to a comprehend plan, Casy believes that the human spirit is the Holy Spirit.Jim accompanies Tom to his familys farm when they find it deserted, fronted by withered crops, they find Muley in that house. Muley is an old family friend that arrested behinde enchantment his family dies for California to tend to his rightful land. He explains haltingly that a large company has bought all the land in the area and evicted the tenant farmers in order to cut labor costs. The three men proceed foregoing traveling to Toms Uncle Johns house, where they find the Joads preparing for a long trip to California in search of work.The entire family has bypast to work pick cotton in hopes of earning enough notes to obtain a car and make the journey to California. Large California landowners have poster announcement for employment throughout western Oklahoma, and Ma and Pa Joad have decided to move their family their evicted from their farm by the bank that owned it, they feel as though they have no choice. Once Tom has been reunited with his family, in the following chapters, the narrator assumes the voice of generic tenant farmers, expressing what their possessions and memories of their homes cogitate to th em.The farmers are forced to pawn most of their belongings, both to raise money for the trip and simply because they cannot take them on the road. Steinbeck makes it apparent during this section of the tonic that he believes that the economic system makes everyone a victimrich and myopic, inside and disenfranchised. All are caught in something larger than themselves. This is used to give type to the bigger picture of society and how situations dictate undesired behavior. In a sense it was a way of taking some hatred mangle the concourse hired to kick people take out their lands because these people overly lost their livelihood.When the time comes to leave, Muley Graves bids the family good-bye, but Grampa suddenly wants to stay. He claims that he aims to live false the land same Muley and continues to protest loudly until the Joads entwine his c finish upee with sleeping medicine. Once the old man is asleep, the family loads him onto the truck and begins the long journey west. When the families leave the farms, the land if left vacant, and is worked by people with no connection to the land. This is used to drive home a radix of man and his relationship to the land as a symbolisation of ownership. much(prenominal) a separation between work and life causes men to lag wonder for their work and for the land. As the Joads make their way down road 66, it is described as being backed-up and filled with broken down poor farmers getting ripped off by auto repair shops selling parts. Steinbeck suggests that the hardships the families memorial t equal to(p)t stem from more than harsh weather conditions or simple misfortune. mankind beings, acting with calculated greed, are responsible for much of their sorrow. Such selfishness separates people from one another, disabling the kind of unity and brotherhood that Casy deems holy.It creates an ugly ire that pits man against man, as is clear in Chapter 12, when a gas transmit attendant suggests that Californ ia is becoming overcrowded with migrants. Steinbeck uses Pa Joad to embody the desire to be connected with the land, this is displayed by his willingness to stay back from his family to tend and live off his native soils. Conversely Jim Casy represents the focus of the family and its the most important manifestation is to stay unitedly. Ma Joad also represents the glu holding the family together and the backbone of the family unit.The family reaches Oklahoma City, while here they suffer the loss of their dog, and Grandpa Joad, and are forced to give them informal funerals due to a lack of money. After aggravator such a major(ip) loss, the family picks up new passenger the Wilsons a family they met broke- down on the side of the road. A few days down the road the family gets told by a car salesman that implications of open jobs in California are false. This brings a large sense of worry among the family because there survival depends on the opportunities waiting in California.At this point of the novel the umteen amilies traveling along the road have come together as one family creating a sense of comfort and belonging. The people have created rules and enforcement of law this is a drastic change in identity and life. They are no longer farmers but migrant men. The family reaches California, marking a major shift in the journey. Once in California, the family is warned by Ma that the family is go apart, as a result of the passing Grandma and the separation from the Wilsons. advent after two sets of dire warnings from ruined migrant workers, Granmas stopping point bodes especially ill for the Joads.They now appear fated to live out the cautionary tales of the men they have met in Chapters 16 and 18, who now seem like predictors of the prox. Before the Joads even set foot on its soil, California proves to be a land of vicious hostility rather than of opportunity. The unwelcoming attitudes of the natural law officers and border guards seem to testify t o the harsh reception that awaits the family. Once in California the family is forced to move north by authority, which do not take a liking for the okies. The family reaches a camp where they stay for a little while. This camp was a squatter settlement of okies with no victuals or work to speak of.This is an unsettling feeling for the Joads and a sense of torturing settles over the family. A man come into the came looking for people to work, but he does not have the proper papers and will not disclose the wages to the workers. This creates skepticism by for the okies and a scuffle breaks out. Which results in Jim Casy taking the blame for Tom knocking out a police force officer. The men take Jim Casy away(predicate) and the Joads flee in search of gumshoe and work. The family finds work in a peach orchard where they get gainful 5 cents a basket. That evening, Al goes looking for girls, and Tom, curious about the disorder on the roadside, goes to investigate.Guards turn him a way at the orchard gate, but Tom sneaks under the gate and starts down the road. He comes upon a tent and discovers that one of the men inside is Jim Casy. Jim tells Tom about his experience in prison and reports that he now works to organize the migrant farmers. He explains that the owner of the peach orchards cut wages to two-and-a-half cents a box, so the men went on strike. Now the owner has hired a new group of men in hopes of breaking the strike. Casy predicts that by tomorrow, even the strike-breakers will be make only two-and-a-half cents per box.Tom and Casy see flashlight beams, and two policemen approach them, recognizing Casy as the workers leader and referring to him as a communist. As Casy protests that the men are only helping to starve children, one of them crushes his skull with a pick handle. Tom go into a rage and wields the pick handle on Casys murderer, cleansing him before receiving a ramble to his own lead. He manages to run away and makes it back to his family. In the morning, when they discover his wounds and hear his story, Tom offers to leave so as not to bring any trouble to them.Ma, however, insists that he stay. They leave the peach farm and head off to find work picking cotton. Tom hides in a culvert close to the plantationhis crushed poke and bruised face would bring suspicion upon himand the family sneaks food to him. Word gets out that Tom is a murder and is forced to leave his family. Before he leave he has a hear to heart with his mother, he speaks of Jim Casy and his way of otherworldliness for the greater good. As Tom leaves his family to fight for social justice, he completes the renewal that began several chapters earlier.Initially lacking the patience and energy to consider the future at all, he marches off to lead the struggle toward do that future a kinder and gentler one. The Joads are left to work on the farm but, then there is a six day flood that wipes away the families cars and settlement. This forces th e family to set off on foot for higher ground. Al decides to stay with the Wainwrights and Agnes. Traveling on foot, the remaining Joads spot a vitamin B complex and head toward it. There, they find a dying man and small boy. The boy tells them that his tyro has not eaten for six days, having tending(p) all available food to his son.The mans health has deteriorated to such an extent that he cannot digest warm food he needs soup or milk. Ma looks to ruddiness of Sharon, and the girl at once registers her unstated thoughts. Rose of Sharon asks everyone to leave the barn and, once alone, she approaches the starving man. Despite his protests, she holds him close and suckles him. This is the closing of the book, which for me is an amazing ending. It was symbol of family and the fight for the greater good of the common people. Analysis In the Grapes of Wrath, we are taken along side a family of okies, who are forced to migrate west.Through this journey we can use the insights of the suffering the migrants went though to ruin understand the immigrant experience. Throughout history outsiders have driven people off their native land. They fall victim to the physical and environmental forces that drive them off the land. Immigrants or in this case migrant workers are labeled as trash and are used as capital gain and shabby labor. This is due a lack of options and the people are forced to work for unfair pay and to be treated unjust. The Dust bowl was an bionomical and human disaster in the Southwestern Great Plains regions of the United States in the 1930s.The areas affected were Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The poor handling of the land and years of drought caused this great disaster (Jones History). During this time the Okiesa name given to the migrants that traveled from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, or anywhere in the Southwest or the Yankee plains to Californiaencountered many hardships. These hardships are brilliantly shown in John Steinbecks Th e Grapes of Wrath. Scholars agree, The most important fact about the dust storms was not scientific but human their tragic effect upon people seeking livelihood on the stricken Midwestern farms (French 4).Steinbeck believed society was inhumane to the Okies and through his novel we can account for how the Okies were treated. By looking at Steinbecks own personal background and information from historical commentaries we are better able to grasp his ratiocination for writing the novel because he understood what it was like to grow up as a farmer, and an outsider. More importantly, however, we are able to share in his compassion for the Okies. To fully understand Steinbecks reasoning for writing the novel it is important to look at his family and where he grew up.John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas California. His parents were middle-class people who played many roles in the community and cultural life. His father worked as a bus of a flourmill, and his mo ther taught in a one-room rural school (Swisher 13). Steinbecks compassion for the Okies is clearly seen in passages like, this The Okies are resourceful, and intelligent Americans who have at peace(p) through the hell of the drought, have seen their lands wither and die and the topsoil blow away and this, to a man who has owned his land, is a curious and mischievous pain (French 56).The encounters Steinbeck had with the Okies inspired him to write The Grapes of Wrath (Swisher 20). The Okies were not only candid to greed but also to the terrible feeling of an empty, deprived stomach. Steinbeck remarks, And in the South he a homeless, hungry man saw the golden oranges hanging on trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low (318).In conclusion Steinbeck wants his readers to feel the pain of the Okies. They were discriminated against because of a circumstance (The Dust bowl) they had no control over. Steinbeck can tinge to this inhumane treatment because he too had suffered teasing and hatred found solely on his physical characteristics. Nature handed the Okies and Steinbeck a liberal hand and he wanted society to grasp the reality of human unkindness.Steinbeck writes, If you land owners could separate causes (hunger in a stomach, hunger in a star soul, hunger for joy and security) from results (growing labor unity, striking at new taxes, output government), if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you can not know. For the tonus of owning freezes you forever into I, and cuts you off forever from the we (Steinbeck 206). So we can use Steinbecks life experiences and historical references to use the Joads journey west to better understand the immigrant experience.