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The Family In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath

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The novel starts off with the Joads having to endure the effects of the Dust Bowl, which forces the family to move to California to start a new life. When they reach California, their hopes for a better life doesn’t fulfill their expectations. They end up having to face the troubles of social injustice. The family has to change the way they look at themselves because they no longer live a normal life.
Of all the members in the Joad family, Tom Joad has the most prominent change throughout the novel. Steinbeck starts off the novel with Tom just recently getting freed from jail and returning home. When he meets his family again for the first time in four years, Tom becomes someone who lives in the present and not thinking about the future. This …show more content…

Burt and Brian Railsback also sees the Joad family, especially Tom, change as a result of their findings from this plight. Burt writes about the great meaning behind The Grapes of Wrath, and what the novel is trying to communicate. He says that Steinbeck successfully generated a universal meaning with “a direct statement of social protest asking only outraged indignation” (Burt). He argues that Steinbeck conveys that in trying to resist these injustices, one must provoke action and not just succumb to these forces. This includes Tom, who becomes a changed man after seeing injustice inflicted upon his family. Tom starts to fight for what is right and not just what benefits himself. Burt even claims that Tom Joad demonstrates his ability to alter his personality for the greater good of others. He expresses Tom’s change as a “break out his isolation for activism, sustained by a greater good that transcends family loyalty and personal protection” (Burt). After Tom’s release from jail, he starts to care more about his family member and protecting not only himself now but also his family. Tom’s change becomes more of an eminent character trait of his after the Joads reach California. He starts to take charge and fight for what is right and not just for the benefit of

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Another topic that develops greatly between the two characters is their relationship with other. One of the main relationships that change with Hiram is his dad. In the beginning of the book, Hiram’s relationship with his dad, Harlan, was rudimentary and Hiram was not a big fan of his dad, but this all changes after the trial and Hiram starts to understand his dad and states “For a second, our eyes met, and something passed between us, an understanding of some sort, from one Mississippi boy to another” (Crowe 227). This shows the reader how the relationship with Hiram and his father really changed in the book.

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Tom’s uncle Brendan is also very supportive to everyone in the family. Brendan helps Tom to recover emotionally, as he not only helps him becoming interested in training again, but treats him like a close friend. Because of Brendan’s help, Tom is able to become fit and see that his life is not over and that he has a future that includes playing rugby, romance and maybe even a holiday in Nepal. The story tries to show how if a Family can stick together if they are faced with tragedy or crisis, despite their different ways of dealing with the crisis, can work together to resolve the issues they

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He is starts to see that being respectable is worth more than be rich. When the play ends he is a man that redeemed himself by overcoming trials. He goes from being hot-blooded to being gentle and able to talk things out. He goes from being immature to being able to be the head of the house and ends up making decisions that benefit all of the Youngers. He changed because the only way he would have successfully made it through the events in the play was to fix himself as a

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A great novel that portrays the way many of the people in the Dust Bowl had to live life

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Additionally, advising to take things little by little as the days go by. This is Tom looking on the bright side and showing his mom his point of view of how he’s at ease and not thinking negatively. Tom Joad's determination to have a better life by moving to California shows his hopefulness despite serving in jail for almost 4 years. This allows him to pass this positive mindset to his mom like he had during his time in jail granting his

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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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The author includes small sections inside the book that focus on the entire situation rather than the one family, these sections give further description on the dust bowl situation and offer metaphors to link to the story while reading. The Joad's are a family consisting of two young children, three women, and seven men who have been entirely affected by the storm and are making their way to California. Tom Joad, the lead male character, is released from jail after serving a short murder sentence and he discovers his family farm has been abandoned, he later finds them and the family prepares for their travels. With little to no possessions or money remaining, warnings of none existing jobs, unkind encounters with strangers, and a couple family deaths, they make their way from camp to camp where small jobs were provided.

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John Steinbeck grew up in a booming farming community in Salinas, California; Steinbeck’s father was a manager of a flour mill, and his mother was a former school teacher. He had a comfortable childhood until his teenage years when his father lost his job at the flour mill and opened a feed and grain store that would fail. The Steinbeck family’s finances did not begin to stabilize until John Steinbeck was in college at Stanford University when Steinbeck’s father became the county’s treasurer. John Steinbeck’s own family dynamics have had an impact on the role of family that he establishes for the protagonist in his novel The Winter of Our Discontent.

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This causes these two men to live with discomfort, which leads them to become irrational and cloistered. Tom does not have a healthy relationship with his mother because he emotionally limits himself; Tom creates tension between him and his mother by not opening himself up to

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Intercalary Chapter Literary Analysis During the Great Depression, the nation as a whole was stripped of financial security and forced into a survivalist way of living. This changed the ways that people interacted with one another and the overall mentality of society. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is torn from their land and find themselves with nothing, a common story for migrant farmers of that time, derogatorily called “Okies” by Californians. But this is not the only group that is struggling, the entire county was in a state of panic and bruteness, no matter how “well off” they seemed to be.

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Tom near the beginning of the novel is portrayed as a kind person, though he might be swift to anger, he is also quite independent. Tom is more than just average or normal he shows strength, power, thoughtfulness, support and the wit or courage it takes face the next challenge. Throughout the novel Tom begins to become committed to helping his family and better their

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In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, the chapters alternate between two perspectives of a story. One chapter focuses on the tenants as a whole, while the other chapter focuses specifically of a family of tenants, the Joads, and their journey to California. Chapter 5 is the former and Steinbeck does an excellent job of omniscient third person point of view to describe the situation. Chapter 5’s main idea is to set the conflict and let the readers make connections between Steinbeck’s alternating chapters with foreshadowing. Steinbeck is effectual in letting readers make connections both to the world and the text itself with the use of exposition, and symbolism.

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The trip to California was inspired by some flyers that Pa Joad received one day. The Joads heard that California was in need of a larger work force, they then began dreaming of an amazing land where they prospered together as a family. But once the Joads arrived in California they realised it is not as stunning and lucrative as advertised. By the time the Joads had arrived, the job market had deplete due to the rush of migration to California, therefore Pa Joad was unable to find a lucrative job to support his family. The Joad family bounced around poverty camps, known as hoovervilles, and fought to keep food on the table.

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Change here is seen when his character, Tom, finds himself in a similar situation. This happens after he loses his new fortune after his affair with the rich woman’s house cleaner is discovered. Tom goes to plead for help in the gambling club where he found himself in problems as the club caught fire. He is taken to the same prison that Hogarth father was detained. However, he ignores the presence of his rich wife and Sarah, his lover who was a maid at the house of the rich woman.

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Due to disasters made by mankind and the natural world, many people are forced to leave their homeland in search for a new place to settle in. Just as the Joads and all the other migrant workers are constantly turned away, the refugees and immigrants of today are treated unequally and viewed as problems. John Steinbecks, The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of a family faced with prejudice and discrimination. Discrimination and prejudice are themes in this novel that are quite prevalent. During the time that Steinbeck wrote this novel, there were masses of people roaming the country in search for work.

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