The Grapes of Wrath Flashcards
Congressman Boren on the darkness of Grapes
“Black, infernal creation”
Kunitz (1939)
“It had to be written”
Priest Spearman on Marxism
“An embodiment of Marxist soviet propaganda”
Rahv (1939) on the length and sentiment
“Far too didactic and long winded”
Angoff (1939) 3 Ms
“Momentous, monumental and memorable”
Hughes (land and the frontier)
“Steinbeck countered the idealism of the frontier”
Spangler on The American Dream
“Steinbeck has smashed the notions of the American Dream”
Stokes on American thought
“Steinbeck portrays a failure in American thought and rationality”
Fiedler on the sentiment of grapes
“Maudlin, sentimental and overblown”
Lisca on the speaker/ narrative
“Each speaker is like a chorus in a Greek tragedy”
Kazin on Steinbeck’s characterisation
“(Characters are) essentially symbolic marionettes”
Lisca on Rose of Sharon’s breastfeeding
“Out of the profound depth of despair comes the greatest assertion of faith”
According to Peter Monroe Jack’ 1939 NYT review what does California’s beauty hide?
“the beauty and fertility of California conceals human fear, hatred and violence”
2 x Quotes from ‘Starvation under the orange tree’ 1939 John Steinbeck
“dispossessed families”
“California cannot feed and clothe the men and women who make it the richest area in the world”
Quote from Peter Monroe Jack (1939) about consumerism
“they turn to their own land to find the seeds of the same destructive hatred”
Nicholas Treddel - characterisation, significance of Ma’s narrative voice, sin/virtue
“the focus is on human beings, not their inwardness”
Bragg on readers then vs now
“as in the 1930s, there is a powerful feeling that the promised land promises nothing”
what does Gladstein say about the presentation of women in TGOW?
“Ma keeps the family together”
she is an “indestructible woman”
Bragg on themes of community and treatment of the “okies”
“refusing entry to their fellow Americans and criminalising them”
quote for the immigrant struggle in Grapes
“marching on with bitterness”
How are the Joads described by Californians?
“okies” “scum”
Quote that shows Ma as a strong woman
“citadel of the family”
Quote to show the impact of The Great Depression
“all of them were caught in something larger than themselves”
Quote to show community/ immigrant struggle
“when a majority of people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need”
Shockley on the biblical message in Grapes
‘they too flee from oppression, wander through the wilderness of hardships, seeking their own promised land’
Chapter 18 - first glance of California (link to Gatsby)
‘saw the great valley below them’…..’t\he vineyards, the orchards the great flat valleys, green and beautiful’ –> ‘The city seen from Queens borough bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in it’s first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world’
Treddel on the motor vehicles
‘in both novels the vehicles become more than mechanical as they are invested with human desires’
shift in Ma from
‘hesitant’ and ‘timid’ –> ‘powerful’
Pa quotes
‘struggling with the burden’
‘ready for a fresh start’
if she swayed
the family shook
their hunger for the land
took the land
no longer farmers but
shopkeepers of crops
golden
oranges
this here’s California
an she don’t look so prosperous
you’re in California
an we don;t want you goddamn okies settling down
the path of flight
refugees from dust and shrinking land
Grapes of Wrath alludes to
the battle hymn of the republic - anti slavery stance
repression works
only to strengthen and knit the repressed
the line between hunger
and anger is a thin line
Cowley - not only a family
but an entire culture is being uprooted
Cowley - What one remembers most of all is steinbecks sympathy for the migrant..
.. not pity - for that would mean he was putting himself above them, not love, for that would blind him to their faults - but rather a deep fellow feeling
Bragg - the neglect of the state of its
own people in the land of the free
