A03 Context Grapes

Question 1

Dustbowl

Answer 1

Severe drought causes the Dustbowl
1930s
Damages ecology and agriculture of prairies

Question 2

Great Depression

Answer 2

Economic depression

Left Americans unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed

Question 3

‘Okies’

Answer 3

Poor immigrant citizens forced to leave their homes in Oklahoma.
Lived in migrant camps provided by Roosevelt

Question 4

My Antonia

Answer 4

Immigrant experience - Czechs in Nebraska
“I help make this land one good farm” - theme of community
“I never came upon the place without emotion” - land and frontier, connected to land

Question 5

TGoW as a Realist text

Answer 5

Common characters - immigrants
Society corrupted by materialism
Social Realism - aims to change a specific social problem

Question 6

American Dream

Answer 6

The Joad’ American dream is to reach California and gain opportunity

Question 7

Innocence to awareness

Answer 7

The Joads think that California is prosperous and the land of hope. They eventually realise that this is not the case and “she don’t look so prosperous”

Question 8

Steinbeck’s “The Harvest Gypsies”

Answer 8

Portrayed the hardship of migrant workers

Question 9

Jim Crow Laws

Answer 9

Laws enforcing racial segregation