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Example research essay topic: Grapes Of Wrath Dust Bowl - 1,870 words

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&# 65279; Of Land and Men Over 100 years ago, a large number of homesteaders settled in a area which would come to be known as The Dust Bowl. Spreading from New Mexico and Colorado through Oklahoma and Kansas, hardy grasses and fine-grained soil provided an incentive for these settlers to pursue a future in farming. And so they did. Over the years they cultivated the land planting wheat and raising cattle; over the years the overworked land became more anymore vulnerable to erosion. While the squatters reaped the rewards of their toil, a time bombs ticking...

Disaster was about to strike. Then, beginning in the early 1930 s, the region suffered a period of severe droughts, and the soil began to blow away. The organic matter, clay, and silt in the soil were carried great distances by the winds, in some cases darkening the sky as far as the Atlantic coast. Standard other materials drifted against houses, fences, and barns. In many places 8 to 10 cm of topsoil were blown away.

Many thousands of families, their farms ruined, migrated westward; about a third of the remaining families had to accept government relief. The tenants had to start anew; the land had erased acres of property and generations of ownership Once again, aware number of homesteaders were forced to seek their future elsewhere. In his classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck addresses customs, anger, and familial relations to emphasize the strong bond between land and people. I.

Customs Casting Off the Old Ways The Grapes of Wrath is the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joad's, who are kicked off of their property and forced to journey westward to the promised land of California. When the Joad's change from farm people to road people, they have to cast off not only many of their belongings, but their habits and customs as well. Nowadays, most people in the United States do not depend on land for their livelihood, and it is hard to understand just how strongly a dust-bowler of the 1930 s could be bound this land. For the tenant farmers of the novel, however, to be torn away from their land isa shattering experience, akin to death itself. While everyone around them is packing up for a new life out west, Muley Graves and Grampa Joad refuse to accept any changes from their traditional way of life. The former, true his name, is determined to stay on the land to which his pa (had) come fifty years ago (64) Stubborn as a mule, he boasts that there ain t nobody [who] can run a guy named Gravesouta this country. (62) Justifying his decision to stay, Muley reasons that somebody needs tobe...

lookin after things so when all the folks come back it ll be all right. (65) Graves isle to distinguish this wistful thinking from reality when he brings himself to admit that the folks ain t never comin back, and that he is... jus wandering about like a damn ol graveyard gho's. (65) For Muley, abandoning the land would force him to abandon his family heritage, but by staying on it he lives in isolation from the family itself. Faced with a choice between the ones he loves and the land he lives on, Graves professes to rather walk the countryside alone like an ol graveyard gho's' than join the throngs going west. Such is the nature of a man s relationship to the land, that he would rather die before resigning himself toa new life alienated from the customs and traditions of his home. As the head of the household, Grampa Joad s pride for his family is hardly concealed. Upon hearing that his grandson had been paroled from prison, he remarks (in typical Muley Graves fashion) that they aint a gonna keep no Joad in jail.

Muley inspires Grampa Joadsrebellion. Grampa claims that if Muley can stay behind and live off the land, so can he. In contrast to Muley, however, he appears to have boundless enthusiasm for going west: Jus let get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes Im gonna squash em on my face an let em run offen my chin, he says on the day before the journey begins.

But the next morning he states, I aint a-goin. He demands to be left behind in the country where he feels at home. Although he doesnt say it in words, he is tied to the land ohio fathers, and to be wrenched away would break him. It is a life or death situation, however, and the family is forced to take him anyway.

They overpower him by spiking his coffee with medicine. But Grampa never recovers from his stupor. He dies the next day and is buried in a roadside grave. After the makeshift funeral, Case tells the others, Grampa didn die tonight. He died the minute you took im off the old place.

Grampa and the land were one and these. Because the Joad's have been transformed from farmers to migrants, Grampa had to die. He had no place in a family that settled in a new land every night. II. Anger The Grapes of Wrath Anger in many guises dominates the book. Why else call it The Grapes of Wrath?

If compare Frankenstein to the Dust Bowl of the 1930 s, then anger is Frankenstein spinster, Frankenstein s creation. The conditions of the time gave everybody a reason to hol a grudge against something. Take, for example, the migrants. These people are furious at society, and with good reason. While food is being buried and burned, hundreds of thousands of malnourished, underfed people roam the countryside. Now, here is the root of anger and shame: What does aman with a starving child do when food is deliberately destroyed before his eyes?

What can heel but rage? History has confirmed that when a nation is on the losing side of a war, its people often turn against themselves; patriotism aside, their primary concern deals with creating a scapegoat for their troubles. The Joad s, saddled with poverty, hunger, and overpopulation are obviously on the losing side of a war, but the question is who they are fighting. Early on inthe novel, the tenant men stood up angrily against the tractor drivers who were threatening to destroy their homes. The tractor driver responded that he was only following orders fromthe bank. When the tenant resolved to fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank, the driver responded that the bank gets their orders from the East: Maybe there s nobody toshio...

maybe, like you said, the property s doing it, he noted. With no target for anger other than the dormant land, hostility shifted to the inner circle of the Joad family. The degree this hostility becomes manifest when Ma Joad alarms the menfolk by stating flatly that she ain t gonna go unless the family sticks together. The only way to force her into going, shears to Pa, would be a whipping, an abuse that no Joad could have dreamed of back on therm. Pa does not take her up on the offer, but it is hard to determine whether this is due this good-nature or fear of Ma s promise to slap you with a stick of stove wood and knock you belly-up with a bucket. Is this the same woman who Steinbeck dubbed citadel of the family only a short while earlier?

III. Love The Human Family Anger, while being a natural reaction to the injustices of the time, was hardly a productive reaction. Anger murdered Jim Case and his killer, too. Anger cast the one-edelman into a state of self-pity, and it touched Muley Graves to the point of insanity. Whatkind of survival mechanism was this?

Indeed what accounted for the Joad's incredible endurance capacity? What gave them the will power to persevere as they did? The answer is love. The improvement of human relations was the one and only positive influence that the Dust Bowl had on squatters and their families. The degree of suffering during this era was enormous. During the 1930 s, aside from the natural disasters inthe midwest, the entire United States was going through an economic depression.

He who suffers alone, according to Steinbeck, is left to cry in bed... only strengthened (by) the walls of his loneliness. Collective suffering, however, can actually strengthen the walls of togetherness; bind the love of one man and his neighbor. In chapter 17, Steinbeck writes that twenty families became one family, drawn together by loneliness and confusion... all were headed toward a place of hope. This, as we know, is entirely untrue.

Togetherness, however, is known to plant the seeds of optimism. The story of the Joad's provide a typical example. Wandering from place to place, searching for work, the Joad family no longer had ampland to support them. Desperate for a replacement of foundation, a reason for living Ma Joads able to identify the most important thing left: What we got left in the worl? Nothin but. Nothin but the folks...

All we got is the family unbroken. Nor could they turn to religion, because even the former preacher, Jim Case, had his doubts: Why do we got to hang it all on God or Jesus? Case s solution bears a striking resemblance to Ma s: Maybe it s all men an all women we love; maybe that s the HolySperit the human spirit the whole shebang. The tenants discover that people need to help each other every step of the way. Far from being a mere pleasantry, to them human kindness is necessary for survival.

It is because of this that Muley feels compelled to share his rabbit with Tom and Case: I ain t got no choice in the matter, he mutters. Over the course of the novel, there are many more instances of people helping people. Without assistance from the Joad's, the Wilson s would not have been able to go on. A bit later the novel the Wallace's invite Tom to work with them. By the end of the book Mrs. Wainwright aids Rose of Sharon in childbirth who subsequently offers her milk to a dying man.

Without this community, without this extended human family, none of the migrants could have found the moral and / or physical sustenance needed to complete their journey to California. What would it be like to leave your home forever and be allowed to take with you online full suitcase? What would you choose? What could you do without? To put things into perspective, imagine yourself as a southern farmer in the early 1930 s. You re family has lived off of the farmland for over two generations.

When the land goes bad, life goes bad, anderen the land is good, life is good. In keeping with this theory, more than half of the mid-western tenants of the time were forced to leave their homes. Throughout the novel, John Steinbeck discusses change, anger, and love to illustrate the physical and emotional ties between Midwestern farmers and their land. 325


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