Transience Flashcards
Can you imagine having to leave a place you’ve lived in your whole entire life? The Joads have spent all of their lives cultivating their land, and now they have to start over. Now they have to go to a place they’ve never even seen before.
“Fella gets use’ to a way of thinkin’ it’s hard to leave.” [Rev Casey]
Grapes of Wrath gives us a window onto the changing culture of America. The tenant farmers seem to be caught in the traditional ways of going about life, and the landowners and merchants are all caught up in their Scientific American and know about the latest advancements in technology. If you don’t have money, how are you supposed to hear about advancements in technology? The migrant families are at a disadvantage
“They don’t use mules for nothing but glue no more.”
It seems to us that, when you get to be Ma’s age, you shouldn’t have to deal with huge roadblocks. Accepts the fate of her family.
“I never had to sell – ever’thing”
So if these families can’t start again, if their hearts are irreparably broken, what can they do? They are stuck in a loop of poverty.
RoS’s miscarriage shows inability to start in these conditions.
“But you can’t start. Only a baby can start.”
When we think about change, we think about new life and new experiences. We think about advancements and growth. But this kind of change rids a huge section of American life and makes it kind of dead.
[Casy:] “Somepin’s happening. I went up an’ I looked, an’ the houses is all empty, an’ the land is empty, an’ this whole country is empty.”
How can land sense change? The idea of change almost has a dangerous quality to it at this moment, and explosive nature.
Change that comes upon them like a sudden thunderstorm.
“The Western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States, nervous as horses before a thunder storm.”
Once you commit to change, you can’t go back
“Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.”
When Reverend Casy says these words, he almost senses, can almost hear the great migration out of the Dust Bowl and toward California.
[Casy:] “They’s gonna come somepin outa all these folks goin’ wes’”
Change in a different light.
An example of change of meaning: a word used to mean one thing, and now it means something entirely different. The fact that meanings can change so easily scares us a little bit, and we don’t know exactly why.
“Well, Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-b**.”
