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Dust Bowl Migration In The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck

741 Words3 Pages

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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