Literary Criticism/John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath Joseph Fontenrose Shortly after the publication of In Dubious Battle , the novel in which he first gave attention to the plight of migrant farm laborers in California, John Steinbeck made a tour of "Hoovervilles," the itinerant workers' camps, in the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys. He picked fruit and cotton beside the field laborers and reported his observations of their living and working conditions to the San Francisco News in a series of articles called "The Harvest Gypsies" ( October, 1936), later republished in pamphlet form as "Their Blood is Strong" ( 1938). Some of this material went into the interchapters of The Grapes of Wrath . The harvesters of California crops were no longer Mexicans and Orientals; now most of them were Okies and Arkies, families that had been evicted from their farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and neighboring states. They had been tenant farmers or sharecroppers, burdened with heavy mortgages, and natural and economic forces had conspired to force them off the lands which they had called home. Dust storms and erosion exhausted the land and completed what economic depression had begun. The banks and the agricultural corporations (creatures of the banks) found it more profitable to foreclose mortgages and terminate tenancies, combine many farms into one plantation, and put it all to cotton. One man with a tractor could work an entire plantation for wages of three dollars a day. So the farmers and their families were evicted-tractored off, their land plowed under and their houses pushed in, if they failed to leave promptly. Many went west to California, having heard or read that men were needed to pick the crops there. -71-http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=25602892

THE GRAPES OF WRATH: (book name) Critical Analysis (page name) The Grapes of Wrath is a great and enduring novel. Its structure, action, style and themes are matters which have fascinated general readers and professional critics ever since its spectacular appearance in 1939. For the sake of simplicity, these topics will be taken up separately. However, the reader is naturally aware that in a work by a writer as subtle as Steinbeck, form, plot, manner, and message are all interwoven into one artistic fabric. Structure The Grapes of Wrath has an admirable symmetry. It is in thirty chapters. These thirty chapters fall into three main groups, each with its own locale. Chapters 1-11 take place in Oklahoma. They describe the geographical and economic conditions which have forced the Joads' and thousands of people like them, to abandon their homes and go west. Chapters 12-18 occur on Highway 66 and recount the terrifying trip of the Joads in their rickety Hudson. (Note that Henry Hudson was an explorer who also -69- http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6858738

John Steinbeck: Of Invertebrates and Men [ 1942] WHEN ONE OF AMERICA'S foremost novelists, a man whose last novel was a whopping success in terms of laurel as well as gravy, sits down to collaborate with the director of the Pacific Biological Laboratories on a semiscientific account of a trip studying the marine fauna in the Gulf of California, 1 something is cooking. The two unavoidable questions for a reviewer are, Why did he write it? and What good is it? and both answers turn out more complicated than you might think. There have been many guesses as to why Steinbeck wrote it, ranging from his desperate search for a new form for every work (this is the one that appealed to the reviewers) to any writer's normal desire to convert a vacation trip that cost him money into a few bucks in royalties (this is the one the reviewers never mention). But the principal reason for the book may be stated in a sentence, and it is the key to much of Steinbeck's work. John Steinbeck, simply enough, dislikes literature and feels the breathless veneration for science of a small boy peeking in through a laboratory window. The contempt that writers express for their own trade is not a new thing, and the pages of literature are full of bitter and ____________________ 1 Sea of Cortez , by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts. p.17- http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=4417352

Religion and Morality in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck "We got each other" In recent years, Steinbeck 1937 classic Of Mice and Men rose to the top of the most challenged books in American schools from 1982 to 1995 ( Attacks on , 1995, appendices, no page). Although this story about hope and love in the midst of misery still has the power to move first-time readers to tears, it also moves would-be censors to complain about profanity, prejudice, irreligion, and euthanasia. In 1994-1995, for instance, from Loganville, Georgia, to Bemidji, Minnesota, to Galena, Kansas, parents requested the book be removed from classroom reading lists and library shelves ( Attacks on , pp. 85, 129, 103). The school superintendent in Cookeville, Tennessee, who admitted not having read Of Mice and Men , pronounced, "Due to the language in it, we just can't have this kind of book being taught" ( Attacks on , 1995, p. 27). In Loganville, Georgia, a parent who thumbed through the book rather than reading it demanded its removal because it was "laced with vulgarities and profanity" (p. 85). In 1992, parents in Hamilton, Ohio, objected to the book because of its supposed anti-Christian content, vulgarity, profanity, and racial slurs. A minister pronounced, "Anybody that's got a child shouldn't want them to read this book. It should be burned up, put in a fire. . . . It's not fit for a heathen to read" (cited in Foerstel, 1994, p. 146). In 1991 an Iowa City, Iowa, mother claimed, "I feel my daughter was subjected to psychological and emotional abuse when the book was read aloud" (cited in Foerstel, p. 144). She didn't want her child talking like a migrant worker, she added. The book was removed (although later returned) from the reading list in p.85 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=91080930

The Squatter's Circle in The Grapes of Wrath John H. Timmerman In John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath , the indomitable Ma Joad emerges as a hero and the leader of, in her words, "the fambly of man." In so doing, however, she also displaces Pa Joad from his traditional position of authority in the family. While several critical studies have examined those qualities of Ma Joad that direct her leadership--qualities of humor, a steadfast vision, and a resilient ability to bend and adapt to new situations without breaking-Pa Joad has disappeared from critical scrutiny as if of no account. In fact, Steinbeck very carefully directs the reversal of leadership roles through the use of the "squatter's circle" motif. That the migrant family of the 1930s was strongly patriarchal has been demonstrated by Tom Collins' detailed reports on California migrant camps during the late 1930s. Collins was the manager of the Kern County Migrant Camp and was also Steinbeck's most profitable source of information about migrant traditions. He personally escorted Steinbeck through both the established government camps and the squatters' camps. More importantly, Steinbeck took back with him to Los Gatos hundreds of pages of Collins' reports and assessments of migrant families. These reports figured directly into Steinbeck's composition of his novel. 1 Collins' weekly reports from Kern County's Arvin Camp, prototype for the Weedpatch Camp in The Grapes of Wrath , testify that these migrant. p.137 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=25602892

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