Grapes of Wrath Chapters 1 and 3

Since this book has chapters (Old Man and the Sea was just 127 pages of a run-on paragraph) I will break the book up into parts and write about them, then do the questions at the end when I finish the book.

After an hour of reading The Grapes of Wrath, I had a flashback to the Lord of the Rings books. In both books there was a ton of detail describing the land and the world that the book takes place in. The LOTR books were good, don't get me wrong, but there was sooo much detail. I was really hoping that John Steinbeck wouldn't pull a Tolkien and describe Oklahoma and everyone else on the road to California with so much detail that I could know what kind of bush (and the condition of the leaves) that the Joad family pees behind on their journey (Steinbeck 124) [I read ahead of what I am posting so there is a little influence of future events in my writings]. The way Steinbeck alters between point of views every chapter is a refreshing way of doing it, and it keeps the book from being boring since the chapters alternate from the story of the Joads to short, anecdote like, passages that tell about the time period of the novel.

Chapter 1's tale about how the women look to the men to make sure they don't fall apart and the children look to the women to see if everything is okay, is a nice tribute to the family hierarchy. The men are the head of the household and dictate family affairs. The women stand by their men and they are the enforcers and the backbone of the family. The children know that if the women are okay and still believe in the men, then they can keep on playing since everything will be okay. This situation is set in the Dust Bowl, but the same family hierarchy situation can still be found in today's economic problems. Chapter 3's tale of a turtle crossing the road is one of survival. The turtle is almost hit by a woman (Steinbeck 15) and is nicked and flipped over by a truck (Steinbeck 15), but rights itself and continues on his journey (Steinbeck 16). I am sure that the survival theme will be an important part of the upcoming story, otherwise it wouldn't have been mentioned, let alone had its own chapter.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.