Grapes Of Wrath Paragraph Analysis

In the book The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck it tells the story of how it was like to live in the times of the Great Depression. One paragraph in particular stands out from all the others. This paragraph shows the reality of what it was like to be in the Great Depression and the hard times people had to go through. The Great Depression was a horrible time in American history the government had money problems, people were losing their money or it was lost before they could even get to it. This paragraph has a lot of symbolism and imagery in a small body of words. Now, to analyze this paragraph “The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man”(John Steinbeck 5) is the first sentence of the paragraph and has an interesting meaning
to this. Saying a man sitting in a chair but does not look like one shows that maybe because he's been through tough times he’s no longer looks like a man should. Then the next sentence comes and says “The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration”(John Steinbeck 5) this sentence shows the power of the sandstorms that were going on because of the dust bowl back at the time of the Great Depression.
“He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled: his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth.”(John Steinbeck 5). This is showing that this man can’t feel the joys of feeling the earth. That he can’t feel the land because there is no land for him to feel it’s all gone, the dust bowl caused the land to become nothing in a sense. He could not smell the earth because he is wearing a dust mask to help with all the dust in the air. Because, of this horrible force of nature he could not feel the life in the earth he stand on.
`“He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing.”(John Steinbeck 5). These two sentences are telling us that this man is not trusting the land, he’s not beseeching it, he doesn’t know it. He can’t use the land for stuff that is useful to him the land he’s standing on is not the land that he once knew. In one of the sentences it talks about if he planted a seed it would not start to grow because there was nothing for it to grow upon. The could not trust it because if he was to try and use it or the man puts a lot of resources into it, that the land would not give him anything in return.