John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath": Chapter 3

Résumé du document

The chapter under study is an extract from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Situated at the beginning of the novel, chapter 3 offers a very detailed description of a land turtle trying to reach the other side of the highway. Its journey is described as a very slow and painful one, full of obstacles that it will have to overcome in order to reach its goal. In this short chapter, the reader is given numerous elements which will help him not only to understand what is happening to the turtle but also what will happen later in the novel. In chapter 2 we had been introduced to the protagonist, Tom Joad, who was going back home after having spent four years in prison. This character is not present in chapter 3 which starts with the description of a struggling ecosystem. The author by using many literary techniques leads us to read this passage as a double layered narrative, full of hidden elements that we will have to discover in order to reach the essence of the chapter.

Extraits

[...] Conclusion In conclusion we can say that the chapter under scrutiny is very symbolical. By showing the ecosystem's resilience to tolerate disturbance without collapsing, the author shows using metaphors and repetitions both nature and man's desire to survive developing an adaptive capacity in order to overcome the dust bowl. Chapter 3 through its description of the land turtle trying to cross the highway foreshadows the story of the migrant farmers of Oklahoma and of the Joads. John Steinbeck in this highly proleptic chapter informs the reader that the migrants will face many difficulties in their slow journey to California but that, like the turtle, they will survive and reach their goal. [...]

[...] We can wonder what is at stake in chapter what John Steinbeck shows us and what he wants to tell us. In order to answer this query we shall first analyse the ecological system's resilience to overcome the dust bowl, which shall lead us to focus on the passage as a very metaphorical one and eventually we shall study the impact John Steinbeck wants to create on the reader. A resilient ecological system An apparent fixity This extract opens on the description of a variety of seeds waiting to be spread by different “actors”. [...]

[...] This activity is suddenly slowed down by the arrival of another actor. The turtle as the representative of determination The fluency of the narrative is broken by the description of a land turtle l.15: over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled” the reptile's crawling is in contrast with to the insects' activity, however the turtle is not totally motionless l.18-20: really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along.” The land turtle's slowness is opposed to the boosting of its shell. [...]

[...] However, their fixity is only apparent since inside the seeds, life is waiting to bloom l.8-9 passive but with appliances of activity” the word appliance already appeared l.5 which shows the author's insistence on the determination of the vegetal world to make a “come back”. As we know, plants have been unable to grow because of the drought and what is presented to us at the beginning of the chapter is the foreshadowing of a rebirth. This passage also shows nature's resilience in the way that it managed to cope with the weather's disturbances and to rebuild or try to rebuild itself. [...]

[...] In chapter two p.9 beginning of the reader is introduced to Tom Joad, the protagonist who is “walking along the edge of the highway” and seems to be following the same path as the land turtle which is crawling the road side”. Both of them are lonely and apparently walking in the same direction since they meet in chapter four. The verbs of movement used throughout the chapter emphasize the idea of migration and the highway that the land turtle has to cross is highly metaphorical. [...]