What Grade Level Should Read Grapes of Wrath

A series in which I read books on required reading lists and talk over their merits.

I call back you'll agree with me when I say:

Required reading in schools should teach kids the value of reading. In today's earth, information technology's believable that some kids volition never read a novel. They'll read summaries online to get through their tests.

Required is immune to be difficult, just it should be comprehensible and motivating every bit well.

I won't bury the lede anymore. The Grapes of Wrath is a slap-up American archetype that should be read by all, simply it should not be required reading in high schoolhouse.

Read on to find out why.

Grapes of Wrath Plot

The bones plot is simple: The Joad family experiences bully loss with the Dust Bowl and Neat Low. They travel west from Oklahoma to California in search of a ameliorate life.

This was what I remembered the plot to be when I read information technology in high school. Merely the novel is over 600 pages long. I thought I must not accept remembered it fully.

This is both true and fake:

The plot is one of the least relevant parts of the volume. Around 100 pages go past earlier they fifty-fifty get out on the trip, and these pages are filled with conversations and essays to give context and characterization.

Very little happens in terms of the plot until the last third of the novel. I won't contribute to the problem I alluded to above about websites answering kids homework questions for them.

The relevant plot points will be discussed as they come upwardly in future sections.

Grapes of Wrath Themes

Allow's look at some of the central Grapes of Wrath themes. There's a lot of them, but I won't sugarcoat information technology:

The Grapes of Wrath has to exist one of the near unapologetically anti-capitalist books I've ever read. The other themes back up this central message.

Death

Death is everywhere in this novel. I near certainly practice non remember this aspect from my own days in high school.

The novel opens with Tom Joad getting out of jail for killing someone. The seeds get planted from the beginning chapter:

• When is killing justified?
• How valuable is human being life?
• How should nosotros react and move on when someone we know or beloved dies?

Death is and so common in this novel that I'm not sure I could tell you all the deaths even though I just finished it.

In Chapter 3, a truck commuter swerves to endeavour to kill the turtle for no apparent reason. In Affiliate 13, the family dog gets run over by a machine on the highway in a truly gruesome scene.

The car doesn't fifty-fifty deadening down to come across what they hitting, and the gas station owner says information technology happens all the time. Oh, well. That'south only how things are.

Several members of the Joad family die, and Tom Joad even kills a constabulary officer.

Many of these scenes were shocking and thought-provoking, but I'm not sure I came away from the novel with any coherent takeaway nigh death.

And that might be the point. Death is often sudden, confusing, and senseless. We have to motility on with our lives, and the earth keeps pummeling forward.

In fact, the cold hand of capitalism doesn't give whatever value to human life. All that matters is profit, even if thousands of people must die.

That brings us to our adjacent two themes.

Organized Labor and Collectivism

If commercialism leads to the dire situation the Joads detect themselves in, what is the manner out?

This is the closest the novel comes to giving articulate answers and themes.

Jim Casy, the ex-preacher, is a social activist and turns into a community leader of the migrant labor camp.

The bulletin is articulate that fair wages and good working conditions volition never happen on their own. The workers must band together and collectively bargain for these things.

The closer and closer we go to the cease of the novel, the more than the Joads turn to the view of customs and collectivism equally a way out of their dire situation.

We'll hash out this more in the next theme and when we talk about the ending.

The Good Life

What makes a skillful life?

This question hovers in the background of the novel from the very beginning.

The Joads don't simply need to move for economic reasons. They're excited to go. They call up of California as the promised land, total of life, sun, and money.

The tone of the novel shifts from this optimism, lilliputian by picayune, as they acquire the truth on the route.

Jobs aren't as plentiful as they idea. Wages aren't as loftier. Then information technology gets worse and worse. The workers end up in labor camps total of expiry and disease.

In light of the previous theme analysis, it would be easy to say this is Steinbeck showing that capitalism actually destroys the American dream.

Merely I think this analysis misses the other prevalent theme. The Joads gradually shift their understanding of the skillful life from material things to that of family, community, and altruism.

Meaning must come from these places considering as the book shows, all other measures of worth tin can be taken abroad by forces outside your command.

Intercalary Chapters

The number i reason people accept trouble with The Grapes of Wrath is that the novel consists of "intercalary chapters." This but means that at that place are chapters betwixt the traditional narrative chapters.

You may be wondering what these are all about.

Prose Analysis

A whole class could probably run on the prose of The Grapes of Wrath.

There is no doubt Steinbeck had Moby-Dick in heed when writing this. Melville used the exact same concept with his chapters on cetology. Melville's were much more focused on the single concept of whales and whaling, though.

Steinbeck's version is to take vignettes on everything from nature essays to car salesmen. These pigment a broader picture of setting for the novel.

I constitute myself frustrated by the fact that these chapters were the best part of the first one-half of the novel. The prose style is beautiful in the essays on the red land.

To the reddish country and office of the gray land of Oklahoma, the terminal rains came gently, and they did non cut the scarred earth.

It morphs into fast-paced colloquialisms and jargon in other chapters.

There'southward a rhythm and flow to these chapters that doesn't exist in the narrative chapters. Moreover, it demonstrates Steinbeck'southward condolement and skill in a diverseness of styles.

It reminded me a lot of Annie Dillard'southward The Living (or, more precisely, Annie Dillard probably imitated this in her novel).

Symbolism

The intercalary chapters tend to introduce symbols outside of the plot. They so somehow weave themselves in. It's quite a startling technique.

For example, Chapter 3 is about a turtle crossing the road: an essay unrelated to the plot just symbolic of the treacherous journey ahead for the Joads.

But then in Chapter 4, Tom picks the turtle up but to release information technology in Chapter half dozen.

Most of these intercalary chapters feel like they have nothing to do with the plot, simply somehow subtly observe their way in.

I read this every bit a commentary on how interconnected seemingly unrelated things are. It'southward a common sentiment of the novel.

Everything feels helpless and pointless. These people were hard-working and did what they were supposed to do to reach the good life merely to find themselves destitute and in poverty due to unrelated forces outside of their control.

I'm actually a bit surprised this novel didn't take off in popularity during/after the Great Recession with how remarkable the parallels are.

Even movements like Occupy Wall Street were very similar to the types of demonstrations the Joads notice themselves in at the end of the volume.

Grapes of Wrath Ending

The ending of The Grapes of Wrath mystifies people in two means.

Rose of Sharon

The entire novel seems to be edifice to i moment: the nativity of Rose of Sharon'due south babe. She's been pregnant for the unabridged novel, so it seems similar a natural conclusion.

Information technology feels like an obvious option for a birth to symbolize hope for their new life in California. This is non what nosotros get.

The babe is stillborn, and the novel continues to one of the most startlingly baroque moments in literature.

Rose of Sharon breastfeeds a dying, starving human. These are the final words of the novel:

Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.

Many people think this is an ambiguous ending, but I don't. Look at the three themes higher up. This moment somehow captures all three at once.

Her baby dies, emphasizing how terrible the conditions accept gotten. The last ray of hope is gone in a sudden, confusing, and senseless manner.

But then Rose of Sharon understands what must be done. She submits herself to the community. She saves a life amidst the loss and recaptures her humanity.

It may not be the good life she imagined, only the smiling shows the human action has set her moving in the right direction.

The Flood

Why does Steinbeck end the novel with a inundation?

First, it provides an ironic contrast to the remainder of the novel. The whole reason the Joads had to move in the first place was due to a massive drought.

They prayed for pelting the whole time. Now that the rain has come, information technology's too much. The flooding makes it so they can't work.

But there's a much more obvious symbolic reason to end on a alluvion. It'southward a reference to the Biblical flood.

So much of this novel is about how to set the plight of the migrant workers, and now that they're on the right path of collectivism, it is time for a divine force to wipe out the bad to create a fresh offset.

Should It Be Required?

I'm firmly of the stance that literature should not be relatable.

The virtually important books we'll read in our lives are the ones that open up our eyes to perspectives and worlds different from our own. Literature is for the other.

Nifty books give the states empathy for others unlike us.

Simply for that to happen, the person has to really read the volume. Required reading should meet kids halfway to be successful.

The Grapes of Wrath is too unrelatable and too challenging. Sixteen-year-olds are concerned about pimples and who volition be prom queen and if the gossip about Johnny has spread nonetheless.

I desire to apply the climax to demonstrate my point virtually this volume being a bit as well unrelatable.

The Climax every bit Example

The novel provokes a visceral response when Jim Casy can't stand getting exploited anymore and tries to organize a union.

Supposing a teenager even makes it to this point in the volume, how will they feel the impossibility of this situation? It'south an economic and power struggle beyond comprehension that ends in Jim Casy's death.

The labor force is also large and drastic, and so the farms go away with paying them as well little to live on. Everyone is dying in slums. Something must be done.

Only when you endeavour to do something near it, the people with money take the power to shut it down. Information technology'due south such a pained and morally fraught situation.

Is collective bargaining the solution? Are regulations and minimum wages the solution? Is there any solution that tin be reached before long by a single, desperate human being watching their family die from the terrible conditions?

I tin can explain it in this way that sounds important and exciting.

But put yourself in the shoes of a teenager.

When Johnny has to read this passage out loud for give-and-take, is Maria going to do annihilation but yawn and watch the clock wondering when the boredom will terminate?

This is the easy part! How will any kid even get to these action scenes when there are several hundred pages of irksome meditations on the state before information technology?

Conclusion

Permit me reiterate: this book is excellent.

I like to call back I was pretty avant-garde in eleventh grade. I liked long, challenging novels. I read them for fun outside of form.

But even I skimmed and looked up cliffs note summaries for The Grapes of Wrath. I got nothing from this book back and then, and neither practise most kids.

The novel only works if you lot're willing to go deep.

For example, the essay about the sound of the tractor works on your subconscious. It's the sound of eviction. It subtly suggests that machines replace homo jobs.

A kid frustrated at the assignment will become none of this. It's not an intellectual do. Information technology works only if yous submit to information technology as a transformative experience.

All this novel does is reinforce the idea that novels are hard, stodgy, and unrelatable. Making this required reading has the contrary of the intended outcome. It turns kids abroad from books, not toward them.

We'd never give students Calculus before they've done algebra, and as well, we shouldn't give students reading they aren't gear up for either.

There are plenty of excellent, difficult novels that are readable and relatable at that age. Those novels will teach kids how rewarding and fun reading can be. Those novels will teach kids how to do prose, thematic, and character analysis besides.

There are ten,000 authors who would serve as groovy additions to the required reading list. Many schools already crave Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, novels that resonate with students much better anyway.

It's probably time to retire The Grapes of Wrath for a more suitable novel.

Further Reading

Check out my articles on:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Looking for Alaska

jacksonthinty1951.blogspot.com

Source: https://amindformadness.com/2019/02/john-steinbeck-grapes-of-wrath-analysis-should-it-be-required/

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