Paper on Lange and Steinbeck

The times of a Great Depression, that left a big mark not only in American history, but in the American Literature and the most relevant, most famous and the most vivid demonstration of it was a story written by John Steinberg “Grapes of Wrath”. This story is concerned to an author’s first story into which he puts all of his talent, the zeal of youth and his emotions. As a result, the great novel is created which was relevant not only at that time, but nowadays as well. “Grapes of Wrath” tells us the story about an American family from Oklahoma. In the place where Joad`s family was living, formerly fertile land becomes unproductive and a bank that was passing this land in lease makes all conditions much tougher, so a massive migration begins. People are forced to move to California in the belief that there they will find a job and a hope to survive. Steinberg requests us to join one of such families, see what is happening with their eyes and evaluate the scale of a disaster. In the movie “Grapes of Wrath” we see the problems of a human existence in a hostile social environment, human rights issues and its outlook. Amazes the indifference of Government, they simply do not care about people who are homeless . People can not find justice for themselves because of the inaction of government officials, so they have only one way, to look up for some luck in the place from where all those leaflets are being sent, in which job and high wages are offered.

Very similar with the picture of Dorothea Lange, the Migrant Mother, the focal point is a woman with the kids who was forced to migrate from her land in order to look up for better life. Gesture of a mother, her indifference to a camera makes this picture very emotional. The emphases on the grief in the face of a woman made due to the fact that the faces of the children remained behind the scenes, also it indicates how complicated the situation is. On the picture where mother is holding a sleeping baby on her hands, a feeling of

uncertainty in their lives only increases better reflects the feelings experience by the mother in this photo. Both “Grapes of Wrath” and “Migrant Mother” are true stories based on the times of a Great Depression. People who have food are feeding someone who is starving, when someone dies, this family finds later a handful of coins. Group of people becomes one community who has one thing in common – find a job, not for money, not for wages but just for a cup of flour and a spoon of lard. This is a quote from a movie “Grapes of wrath”, where a man, who was looking for a job himself and all his tries were unsuccessful, explains to those people who are still on the way to California, how bad things are. He tries to inform migrants that the places they are going have not enough jobs for everyone and the leaflets, that gave them a hope for a better life, are printed three times more than actually workers are needed. He provides a real example of himself and his family which is now dead from a starvation. In this speech he highlights once more the indifference of a government, when his kids died the policeman wrote in a report that the death occurred from a cardiac insufficiency, or in a scene when they were in a migration camp, when the woman was shot by an “employer” which came to offer a job to the people. The “cops” arrived and when they expected the scene of actio, one of the policeman’s commented on a situation as follows: “What a mess does 45`s” so basically they did not care about people, had no pity to them, he was surprised about how well does the gun works. Very similar is the photo of a Migrant mother, nobody would care about the children, they have no food and their skin became very thin, so we can even see their bones. This shows us how cruel was this time. Only one scene in my opinion shows us that even though it is a hard period of time, but there are some good people. It is a scene in the movie when Dad comes to the shop and asks for bread for the grandmother. From the start, the waitress was not nice to him and very rude, but when she saw two kids looking at the sweets, she took a pity on the children and gave two sweets for a price of one “do you have any sweets for 1 dime?” “Oh, no, themes two for one”, but before she would not even give a bread to a man for 10 dimes. ”You can’t buy no bread for 10 dimes, we have only the one for 15”. Even though it is America, but still it is impossible to control everything from a window of a White House. Violence breeds violence and people who had no way out they just were forced to step over the edge of the law. They were suffering it for some time, but nobody wanted to die, just because our genetics is created this way – instinct of a self- preservation. Authors of both texts “Grapes of Wrath” and “Migrant mother” are not trying to embellish these families, but shows them to us the way they became by the surrounding area, the time and a rules of a society. Even though it was long time ago, but it still affects us very much and the authors delivered these messages to us, so that we ourselves can think about it…

References: Beyond words by John Ruszkiewicz Macmillan’s dictionary by Macmillan

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