Semester TWO, Blog #13 (GOW Final Essay)

Option 3) Describe how the balance between specific stories about the Joad family and broader description of the migration of Dust Bowl farmers impacts the novel as a whole.

The Grapes of Wrath is a book that shows the side of the farmers that get kicked out of their homes. Once kicked out they hear of work in California so thousands head west. The book mostly stays on one family called the Joads, it seems they have the worst luck possible. The book does make you feel sorry for them and you do want to know what happens but something kills the mood. That thing is the “zoomed out” chapters, which talk about things and people as a whole no one specific. Some of these are about dust some about a turtle and others about cars salesmen’s thoughts as they sell cars. Of course these chapters foreshadow and symbolize however when it talks about these random events it gets boring and fast.

The first chapter of the book is about the great dust bowl and how it ruins the crops for the farmers. It does inform you about what is happening and you do feel sorry for them but a simple description would have been fine. The second chapter you meet the main character but it seems you follow someone else until the last couple pages. Once you get to the sixth chapter you learn the main story. You also meet the rest of the family and main characters. The sixth chapter, that’s almost one-third through the book.

The story on the family is good but with those random chapters it slows the book down. When it “zooms out” I tend to zone out. Some of these “zoomed out” chapters don’t even have full sentences or proper English. When reading a book you should be able to get into it and understand it. In this book as soon as it gets a little interesting another random chapter comes and you get bored and don’t want to read on again.

I think it did show you what happened and that it was to a wide range of people not just the Joads. However it makes the book way longer and it at least annoys me to almost stop from reading through the entire book. So it helps a little bit but I think it stops people from wanting to read the entire book. The impact is major, at least for some of my fellow classmates and I. It slows or can even stop people from reading this book. This book gave a lot of attention to the less fortunate during the great depression so it should be good if it is to give or gave sympathy.