Preview

How Does Steinbeck Use Analytical Lenses In The Grapes Of Wrath

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
445 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Steinbeck Use Analytical Lenses In The Grapes Of Wrath
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joad family, mainly Tom Joad, as they live through the Dust bowl. With corporate monsters and the struggle of living through this perilous time, the family does their best to survive. There are 4 main types of analytical lenses that can be used to look at Steinbeck’s work, including the archetypal, gender, marxist, and historical lenses. Archetypal deals with character types and their narrative design. Gender deals with the roles and stereotypes applied to the different gender roles in the novel. The marxist lens focuses on socioeconomic influence and historical information from the time period. Character design is a large part of any form of creative media, including literature. The Grapes of Wrath

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the greatest angry books. Its dominating idea is that of imminent, overwhelming anger. Steinbeck, as a responsible writer, was concerned with exposing a problem in all its complexity instead of arguing a single solution. In writing his novel, he decided to depict for the readers the insult and deprivation suffered by people like the Joads. To present the story of simple human beings while providing at the same time the social documentation. Steibeck's anger of the whole situation turns into a book to show an example of the fate of Joads and their problems while moving with the mass to…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Just over half of the thirty chapters of The Grapes of Wrath are intercalary chapters, chapters deviating from the main narrative of the Joads that focus on a broader picture of the landscape and history of the Joad era. The Grapes of Wrath is as much historical record and social commentary as it is a narrative of one family’s odyssey through the Great Depression West. While criticized by some as distracting from the Joad narrative, the intercalary chapters cannot be ignored as fluff attached to the novel. The intercalary chapters buttress the main story by interweaving details among the chapters and bringing a specific situation into a larger historical picture. These chapters are not merely common literary techniques such as metaphors and symbols. Along with historical context and social commentary, these chapters reach out to prior events and foreshadow future events, while bringing these events to a universal level. At a base level, Chapter Three is an account of the movement of a land turtle and it struggles across the Oklahoman land. In less than three pages, John Steinbeck uses the techniques of the intercalary chapters to represent the turtle as a symbol of the Joad family and their struggle, along with the trials of other migrant families, and as an inspiring message for the human race as a whole.…

    • 1167 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck shows a variety of rhetorical strategies and devices in the first fourteen chapters, such as, symbolism, diction and personification to help the reader be more intrigued.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Nobel Prize winner for literature, John Steinbeck, in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, illustrates the hardships of the migrant farmers as they moved from their homes. Steinbeck’s purpose is to establish how much the Joads and other migrant farmer families struggled during their journey and to . Through the use of personification, allusions and symbols, Steinbeck successfully gets his message across to his readers.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck is written in a peculiar way using intercalary chapters. Every other chapter of the novel is plot, while the other half is a descriptive exposition of the lives of farmers during the great depression and the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck incorporates a great use of diction such as parallelism and strong syntax. In chapter five, he truly engages these skills to almost set the tone of the novel, which appears to be antagonistic and desperate. Steinbeck achieves his purpose of expressing a desolate ambiance by constantly using personification when describing the bank.…

    • 349 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Grapes of Wrath is a unique story about the Joad family, forced from their home in Oklahoma, and their journey to California in search of work and a new life only to find poverty and despair. Steinbeck fills his story with unusual but remarkable characters. Tom Joad, Ma, Pa, Rose of Sharon and Jim Casey all play a major role in the novels plot, and develop to become more tenacious and strong-minded characters.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    John Steinbeck is an American novelist and is considered also a socialist. He was born in February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He dropped out college and tried to work as a manual laborer but failed. Later he began to be a successful writer. His novel The Grapes of Wrath is a prize-winning novel that portrays the plight of rural laborers during the Great Depression. In this novel, both Steinbeck’s wrath and optimism are woven. His sympathy towards the migrant workers and sense of outrage are well-portrayed in the novel. This research paper will handle in detail how the novel’s state of anger is prevailed as well as the novel’s different…

    • 112 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stereotyping, brought on by the existence of a class system, has many positive effects in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. This class system, made up of migrants and affluent people, is present due to the fact that many of the affluent people stereotype the migrants as poor, uneducated, and easily agitated human beings. Thus, this sets a boundary between the educated individuals and migrants. At first, most migrants ignore the effects stereotyping has on them. But towards the end of their journeys to California, the migrants' rage that had been gradually building up inside lets out and the migrants take action. The effects are more positive as the migrants strive for an education, receive sympathy, and calmly deal with conflicts.…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck presents the migrant farmers of the Dustbowl Migration to the general public through the Joad family; a family whom faces discrimination and blind hate from the Californians. Steinbeck touches the subject of personal, social, and economic interconnection during that time period through the action of the Joads and the people they encounter.…

    • 1107 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Through The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck conveys the importance of self exploration and individual spirituality. He weaves a tale through which the reader sees both the external hardships and the internal journeys of the book's casts. His success at delivering his message while keeping the book realistic and entertaining is what truly earns this book its place in…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, is a classic American novel about the Great Depression. The novel is written in incalerarly chapters and is about the struggles that migrant workers faced during this time. When Steinbeck was writing his novel, he did lots of research and the struggles he writes about are from real stories. As we look closely at the chapters individually, from the syntax and diction, we are able to conclude the overall purpose of the novel. Steinbeck’s use of parallelism and diction, in chapter 5, supports his message that the farmers were against something they could not take down alone.…

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a novel depicting the struggle and distraught brought towards migrant workers during the Great Depression. The Grapes of Wrath follows one Oklahoma family, the Joads, as they journey down Route 66 towards the earthly paradise of California. While on route to California, the Joads interact with fellow besieged families, non-hospitable farmers, and common struggles due to the Depression. Steinbeck uses these events to show strong brotherhood through biblical allusion, character development, and inter chapters.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Marxist lens is used to examine how socioeconomic factors influence the plot, setting, reader, author, and time period of a certain subject. The Marxist lens is based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxists believe that literature itself is social institution and has a specific ideological function. Marx said that human history can be studied best by observing how the lower class interacts with the higher class. One of the most obvious observations that can be made through the Marxist lens about Frankenstein is the motivation behind the creation of the…

    • 92 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The dust bowl was a tragic time in America for so many families and John Steinbeck does a great job at getting up-close and personal with one family to show these tragedies. In the novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”, John Steinbeck employed a variety of rhetorical devices, such as asyndeton, personification and simile, in order to persuade his readers to enact positive change from the turmoil of the Great Depression. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck tells the fictional narrative of Tom Joad and his family, while exploring social issues and the hardships of families who had to endure the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s purpose was to challenge readers to look at the harsh realities around them for “the purpose of improvement”. The rhetorical strategies used in the “Grapes of Wrath” elicit a deeper understanding from its readers for the hardships these migrants faced and helped them to fight for a better way. (John Steinbeck, "Banquet Speech," Nobel Foundation, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1962/steinbeck-speech.html, Accessed 30 August 2013.)…

    • 1767 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Grapes of Wrath Essay

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, the narrator explains how a social issue affected the Joad family. The realistic novel mimics life and offers social commentary too. It presents many windows on real life in Midwest America in the 1930s. Throughout the 1930s, America was trapped in the worst economic era ever—The Great Depression. The Joad family is struggling to find salvation during this tough time period. Because of this, they must travel from Oklahoma to California in order to start a new life. The Great Depression affected everyone in the United States, some people worse than others. Steinbeck uses several different strategies to interpret the social issue during this time period. By using the literary techniques of setting, tone/mood, and dialogue/language, Steinbeck composes a creative commentary on the Great Depression and how it affected the lives of Americans.…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays