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Dust Bowl Migration In The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck

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In the well-written novel, The Grapes of Wrath, author, John Steinbeck, uses detailed descriptions to describe the land of Oklahoma during the 1930’s Dust Bowl migration. The Dust Bowl migration was a period of time when farmers from Oklahoma and other states in the midwest began moving to California due to the many severe dust storms that ruined the land and agriculture. Steinbeck demonstrates the effects of the major dust storms early-on in the novel. “All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees...Men stood by their fences and looked at …show more content…

Foster, Foster clearly states, “The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered” (Foster 32-33). This quote relates to “The Grapes of Wrath” in the sense that the main character, Tom Joad, was sheltered from his family. Tom Joad had spent four years in prison for killing a man. During this time, Tom did not see his family and was sheltered from them. When he was released from prison, his quest was to find his family. Foster states that, “The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there” (Foster 32). In “The Grapes of Wrath” one of the first quests we see is when Tom Joad is released from prison. In this quest, we see the five things a quest consists of. Item a, the quester, is represented by Tom Joad. Item b, the destination, which, in Tom’s case is to return back to his family’s farm. Item c, the reason for going to that destination is seen because Tom wants to return to his family’s farm so he can be reunited with his family. Item c, challenges Tom faced, first appear when Tom arrived at his family’s farm. When tom arrived he found out they had been evicted from the land and were currently staying with Tom’s Uncle John. Lastly, item e, the real reason Tom returned to find his family. The real reason Tom returned to the family’s farm in hopes of finding his family was because he had missed them over the past four years he was in prison and he hoped to reunite with them. John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” ties in with the ideas from Thomas C. Foster’s “How to Read Literature Like a Professor.” Steinbeck uses the five items that make up a quest to show how and why Tom Joad wanted to be reunited with his family. Not only does Steinbeck, use Foster’s idea of the five items that make a quest but,

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These farmers tilled the land pulled up any remaining grass in the area only making the dust storms worse. During this time farming, there were a lot of struggles and difficulties for the families that were working the land. They had many hardships with the dust storms that was caused by fierce winds that would knock people and animals to the ground, making it impossible to breath and see causing the person to be lost as to which way they were headed and which way they came. In some instances the sandstorms go so bad it would even suffocate the animal or someones loved one. They also had difficulties with grasshoppers and rabbits that would add to crop failure and resulted in many losing so much money on the farms that some would quit and abandon their wheat

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The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).

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In between each narrative chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote intercalary chapters to add to the narrative. These sixteen chapters were a very effective way for Steinbeck to make his points, and progress the theme of the novel. The intercalary chapters were a wise way to summarize the entire struggle of the suffering people during the dust bowl. They showed how Joad family was one example of the millions of families who migrated to California during the dust bowl, and the general rage and resistance felt in the innocent farmers, brought on by rich privileged men who gain their power from the unstoppable big banks. These chapters strengthen my knowledge of the struggles of the time, and give me more information of what is not seen from the Joad’s struggles alone.

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The Dust Bowl had impacted farmers and their techniques. The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of acute and dangerous dust storms in the midwest that greatly damaged the farming and agriculture of the American people in the 1930’s. The dust bowl was caused by major droughts in the area. The farmers were the people who were affected the most by the dust storms because there entire living was destroyed. The dust bowl affects the areas of Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Texas because of the severe soil erosion, during that time period which forced people to move.

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The Dust Bowl was a very pro-founding topic in American history. It was a period of severe dust storms that occurred in the American Great Plains during the years 1930-1936. Donald Worster wrote a scholarly book, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, that reflects on the drastic effects of the event. Worster also offers his reasoning as to why the Dust Bowl happened. He claims, “The dust bowl was the darkest moment in the 20th century life of the southern plains...

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How Have Humans Changed the Soil? By Aria The Dust Bowl era affected almost everyone in America in the nineteen twenty’s and thirties.

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It’s difficult to get kicked out of a land you have lived in for so long and end up having nowhere to go. In this novel, Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, shows Tom Joad’s journey with his family to a new place where they've never been. They travel from Oklahoma to California and encounter a lot of hardship. Tom Joad is the main character in the story and is portrayed in the beginning as someone who can’t control their anger. He shows development in managing his anger issues as a result of his family’s unwavering emotional support.

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Since the book came out in 1939, everyone has had a opinion on the ending to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It has a very controversial ending, that Steinbeck thought would name the last nail into the coffin, so to speak, on how bad the dust bowl and moving west really was. The ending starts when the Joad family is threatened with a flood, so they make their way to a old barn where they find a boy and his old father. The boy says his father is starving, and that he can’t keep anything solid down. He needs something like soup or milk.

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Ever heard of the Dust Bowl? “The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that really damaged the agriculture of the US and during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was a severe drought that has started to ruin the agriculture. When this happened the states including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico were affected.” ( John Steinbeck ).

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“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was booming with new industrial innovations because of new technologies, and it was becoming one of the leading economies in the world. This economic boom came to a sharp halt as events such as the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl hit, causing millions of Americans to face economic struggles. “The Strenuous Life,” a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, displays the ideas of American work ethics that led to economic growth in the early 1900s. These ideals of work ethic not only prompted the cause of the Dust Bowl, but were continued on into the lives of the affected farmers as Americans displaced and in poverty from this event continued to participate in migrant work with awful living

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“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe” (Douglass). In Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl Age novel, The Grapes Of Wrath, protagonist Tom Joad, and his family are forced from their farm due to the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, believing to set out to refuge for California, along with many struggling migrant workers. Including the family, thousands of migrant workers are in search of jobs, land, and the hope for having a brighter future. Steinbeck also includes the aspect of characters who come along such as Jim Casy, whose characteristics rely on human unity and love as well as the need for cooperative rather than individualistic ideals during hard times. Steinbeck uses Jim Casy’s significant role to criticize society’s hunger and the crimes against humanity, where he brings up helpful ideas however society refuses to accept his ideology or his philosophies due to having the inability to adapt to new ideas, alienating Jim Casy from workers’ values of their culture but use that disadvantage to spark a plausible unity to keep migrant workers from salvation.

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487 Words | 2 Pages

Through John Steinbeck's plot in The Grapes of Wrath,  the struggle of the typical American dreamer is depicted in the Joad’s attempt to move to California for a better life. While attempting this dream, the Joad family had to make multiple sacrifices. The first sacrifice occurs early on in their journey, the abandoning of their property (Steinbeck 59). This was extremely difficult for the Joads because they had lived on this land for a long time and they had many memories that had been created there.

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At the time of the Great Depression, when a family is told by their owners that they must give up their land, they face the agonizing struggle of finding a new and better life. This is the theme that Steinbeck utilizes in The Grapes of Wrath as the Joad family experiences this very struggle and begins a journey of hardship from Oklahoma to California to start their new life. Throughout this journey, Steinbeck exhibits irony through the hypocrisy of the sharecroppers, the desire for new life, and in this instance the American dream as a myth. When the tenants are told that they have to give up their land, they argue that “Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land.” Or in other words, their ancestors acquired the land by killing the

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The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family through their journey west to california for jobs and a better life, but as the story goes on the life they dream of slowly grows farther and farther from reality, however even though

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