The grapes of wrath

2.2 American Social Ethos in the Grapes of Wrath
Like other masterworks of the American literature, the analysis of "the Grapes of Wrath" can result in different the way in which explained an event, and clear different results for it has proved to be a canonical work that accurately relates to history. Steinbeck wants to set this topics on both individual and social levels. Furthermore , his masterpiece can affects the characters that are essential during the Great Depression. As the central trouble is opened in the Grapes of Wrath that is hardships of migrant families during the Great Depression and Steinbeck is able to create the characters' development of roles to showcase the shift from patriarchy to matriarchy that characterized the American family as a basic entity.
Through the novel the "Grapes of Wrath", John Steinbeck uses a set of themes, some of them are managed on an individual level such as " Ma Joad", "Jim Casey" and" Muley Graves" , meanwhile there are other set of ethos that are put on a higher level , the social level, to achieve the collective sense promotion intended by Steinbeck. These topics include hope, class clashes, family importance, and poverty. The function of the social aspects is that they prefer the group, rather than the individual and their attitudes during the years of the Great Depression
"Grapes of Wrath " was written in 1933 when the Great Depression in America was already at the high stage. The title emphasizes in a wrathful feelings, hence, it was quite natural that readers of the novel would hope the state of being desperate and alternative solution. To depict the hopes that were held by the Oklahoman migrant farmers of the Depression time, Steinbeck explained a strong thread of hope that continued until the end of the novel through many characters and behaviors. The first and essential sign of hope was in the very first pages, when Tom came out of jail on a parole, it was a sign of chance start it all over. Additionally, Tom Joad was supposed to have spent seven years behind bars but since he was behaving well in prison he was got out on four years. When Tom Joad finally funds his family, he finds out that his sister, Rose of Sharon, is married to Connie Rivers, a nineteen-year old moody guy. And Rose of Sharon is going to have a baby. Rose of Sharon's pregnancy make clear that a new beginning that is to come soon among the spoilt paradise that have been important because Rose of Sharon and her baby are in the center of the family. For instance case from the novel is: The world had drawn close around them, and they were in the center of it, or rather Rose of Sharon was in the center of it with Connie making a small orbit about her. ⁹
On a larger level, hope in the Grapes of Wrath is the whole energy. The Joad family like the rest of the families from Oklahoma moves west to California for they have seen a better life and promising conditions. The decision for leaving westwards to California was fueled at first by the handbill demanding farming workers to do the picking on the seasons of fruits. Steinbeck shows the importance of the hope of Oklahoman farmers held for California, that hope is the basis of the journey to the promised west: And the tenant men came walking back, hands in their pockets, hats pulled down. Some bought a pint and drank it fast to make the impact hard and stunning. But they didn't laugh and they didn't dance. They didn't sing or pick the guitars. They walked back to the farms, hands in pockets and heads down, shoes kicking the red dust up. May be can start again, in the new rich land in California, where the fruit grows. We'll start over .Among the Joads themselves, there is a good thought about how life would be in California. Ma shows to the family her relieving instincts about their life in the west: That's a good way... Yes, that's a good way. But I like to think how nice it's going to be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An' fruit ever place, an' people just being in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder that is, if we all get jobs an' all work maybe we can get one of them little white houses .Shortly afterwards, on a campsite on their road westwards, Pa Joad tells the fellow migrant residents of the camp that he is well over his loss of land and home, since he is to have better one in California. Lucky for us it is going to last long," said Pa. "We'll get out west an' we'll get work an' we'll get a piece a growing land with water". ¹⁰
Hope during the Great Depression was the main reason that people fought and came over the unwanted obstacles and remained united. Through the Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, more than any author of the time, vividly presented the hopes of the proletarian class that led them to whatever they were. The Grapes of Wrath has won its respectful epithets and placement within the finest proletarian novels in the American literary canon. Proletarian novel is a genre of realistic novels dedicated to the working class and the social or the industrial and socioeconomic problems they endure. The proletarian novel is called as such for it is clearly siding with the working class. Sociologically speaking, society according to Karl Marx is divided into two main different divisions: the bourgeois and the proletarians. The two groups can never get along, because they have an economic gap between them and therefore an ideological one. Characters in the Grapes of Wrath are divided into two different groups just like the division Karl Marx has suggested. After his solid observations on the American life during the thirties, John Steinbeck makes the bourgeois appear throughout the novel in the form of the bank's envoys and later on they are depicted through the farm employer of California. On the other hand, the proletarian class is represented through the Joad family and the rest of the migrants in both Oklahoma and California. The very first signs in the Grapes of Wrath that reflect the gap that was lucid in the American society is when farmers of Oklahoma are obliged to move to California in search for a better life conditions. Later on, the clash of the social classes sharpens when the landowners of California use the migrants as cheap source of labor and an available means to increase their own profit. When Tom Joad has been in the first camp around the Road , he starts a conversation with one man who has been in California. As the conversation goes by about some conditions back in Oklahoma and the Midwest and how they are to be in California as well, the man explains how things are to go with them because since they belong to the same region and class, they are consequently going to pass through the same discrimination. The man questions Tom whether he has ever been addressed as an Okie or not. The term Okie is a local Californian slang word used to refer to the poor migrant farmers coming from the agrarian Midwest states, mainly Oklahoma and other states such as Arkansas, Kansas and Texas. The word Okie is used in an offensive manner that is as distancing as the term Nigro as reference to the African Americans. Oklahomans are thought to be dangerous and threatening to the Californian integrity and peace and it is for the good of the indigenous people if migrants are to be overwhelmed. The status quo is lively depicted in the" Grapes of Wrath" :
Got to keep 'em in line or Christ only knows what they'll do! Why, Jesus, they're as dangerous as niggers in the South! If they ever get together there is nothing that'll stop 'em ¹¹
In a clearer image, Steinbeck stresses the facts that the desperate migrants are discriminated, he writes through the man who talks to Tom Joad about Californian landowners:
"They going to look at you an' their face says, 'I don't like you, you son-of a-bitch.' Going to be deputy sheriffs, an' they'll push you around. You camp on the roadside, an' they'll move you on. You going to see in people's face how they hate you... They hate you cause they're scairt. They know a hungry fella going to get food even if he got to take it. They know that fallow lan's a sin an' somebody' going to take it... You never been called 'Okie' yet." Tom said, "Okie? What's that?" "Well, Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's the way they say it. But I can't tell you nothing. You got to go there." ¹²