Major Themes, Favorite Quotes, & Lasting Impact
I. Identify a minimum of 5 theme statements from the text and display appropriately
II. Choose 5 favorite quotes from the text for display
III. Display information concerning the lasting impact of their text
Major Themes
Community/Strength of Family
--The closeness of the Joads, working together with fellow displaced families
--The closeness of the Joads, working together with fellow displaced families
Survival
--The Joads desperately looking for work in order to afford food
--The Joads desperately looking for work in order to afford food
Corporate Greed
--Banks and companies seizing the farms
--Banks and companies seizing the farms
Hopelessness/Death
--People not being able to find work, the deaths of Grandma, Grandpa, and the baby
--People not being able to find work, the deaths of Grandma, Grandpa, and the baby
Favorite Quotes (click to hear!)
"You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff." -Tom Joad, The Grapes of Wrath (23)
"There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do." -Reverend Jim Casy, The Grapes of Wrath (27)
“It’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.” -Tenants, The Grapes of Wrath (39)
“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.” -The Grapes of Wrath (175)
“This is the zygote. For here “I lost my land is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—“We lost our land.” The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one.” -The Grapes of Wrath (176)
Lasting Impact
Even though The Grapes of Wrath was published more than seventy-five years ago, its historical content is still relevant to today’s society. Its environmental and economic focus is especially significant with the recent recession and concerns about the drought in many Western states. The Grapes of Wrath’s controversial yet brutally honest contents were deemed “provocative” by the novel’s contemporaries due to its use of profane language, as well as the vivid descriptions of the conditions in migrant camps. However, the novel’s guileless honesty sparked social revolutionaries such as Cesar Chavez, although it also led to the widespread censorship of the novel. Despite this, the most important message that The Grapes of Wrath has to offer is the very American notion of hope and the knowledge that even when things seem to be at rock bottom, they can only go up from there.