The Grapes of Wrath: Chapter 1

Okay, so it’s time to begin Grapes of Wrath. Just from looks, it looks like this may be a tad bit longer than The Old Man and the Sea, maybe. And what is this on the first page? A number at the top? What could that be? Oh that’s right, books have chapters still. I guess I spent too much time reading The Old Man and the Sea.

Anyway, the story starts out in Oklahoma at the beginning of the Dust Bowl. The first chapter basically tells about the steps that led up to the time when the wind blew the top soil away. It went into great detail explaining the landscape. It was a nice change from Hemingway’s blunt and short prose that did not really describe many things in detail. The way Steinbeck describes the land in Chapter One slightly reminds me of how Christopher Paolini described everything in Eragon and all of his other books. I like this level of description because it helps the reader to visualize what the characters are going through easier than if they only had the characters actions.

Another important part of chapter one would be when it describes how the different members of the family reacted to the harsh conditions. The passage “The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether the men and women would break” shows that during this time period, there was a very strong family hierarchy (Steinbeck 3). The women only would break if the men broke and the children would only break if the women broke. So basically, it was all up to the man if the family was going to survive where they were at. That same basic hierarchy can still be seen today, though it is for the most part very weak, or nonexistent in some families.

Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.