But we know we are still looking at a place subject to currents and tides, still filled with the same salt water as the rest of the sea. The surface of the novel is so frothy that you may barely notice the deeper currents, its unique and daring structure — but it is there.
Cannery Row may be sentimental but it is far from shallow. No complaints … modern-day Cannery Row in Monterey, California. Purchase instant access PDF download and unlimited online access :. Add to Cart. PDF Preview. Save Cite Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. The Grapes of Wrath 2 vols. American Studies. Table of Contents.
Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. Cancel Save. View Expanded. View Table. View Full Size. Corporate Social Responsibility. Mission Statement. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the hard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. And men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. All growth is transformation, but for the farmers of The Grapes of Wrath, sharecroppers and landowners alike, the power to grow is closely coupled with their sense of self.
Which makes it doubly painful when the abundant fruits of their labor are destroyed in order to drive prices up:. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. Here the grapes of wrath become part of a system of perversion, an agriculture that produces violence and decay instead of fruit.
Meanwhile, wrath works its own transformations on the people, bringing deep divisions between the hungry migrant workers and people in the towns:. They splashed out … to beg for food, to cringe and beg for food, to beg for relief, to try to steal, to lie. And under the begging, and under the cringing, a hopeless anger began to smolder. And in the little towns pity for the sodden men changed to anger, and anger at the hungry people changed to fear of them. The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last.
And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right—the break had not yet come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath. After all, decay and death are difficult to kill.
It strikes home in this U. Wrath can be, and is, a force behind change, and that may be the task ahead: to make our wrath bear wholesome fruit. Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
First among those rules is that facts matter. I find that Steinbeck sets forth his intentions clearly from the onset.
This observation applies to Charley. By his careful delineation of his intentions to inform himself, Steinbeck leaves himself free to conjure, to imagine, to take poetic license as he sees fit. Travels with Charley in Search of America may well be classified as private discourse, leaving this work to stand alone among his other works of fiction and nonfiction.
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