Open Prompt #2 - The Grapes of Wrath

2006. Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.

     "Thank god I'm a country boy". These words from John Denver reflect the soft spot that the countryside holds in our collective american heart. In the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck the country functions as a reflection of the human condition, specifically the lush valleys of California represent hope and dust ravaged plains of Oklahoma represent both the greed that causes people harm as well as the goodness Steinbeck believed was inherent in all people.

     The Joads are Oklahoman farmers who migrate west, forced from there longtime home by economic conditions that are no fault of their own. They had to sell almost all their worldly possessions and leave behind the lifestyle enjoyed by Joads generations before them. They are drawn to California in hopes of getting good jobs picking fruit, spurred on by handbills promising jobs for all comers. This hope is evident in the family throughout the novel and represented by the Cali' countryside. The famously fertile valleys causes everything to be green, and seems to offer prosperity to all those who reach out for it. The imagery Steinbeck uses to describe it echoes of the american dream, the ideal that if you work hard, you won't be left wanting. The California countryside serves as a beacon of hope for Steinbeck's characters.

     The Oklahoman countryside represents two contrasting elements of the human condition in the novel. First and foremost it represents the goodness that resides in the hearts of all of us. Throughout the novel the Joads are stripped of every human dignity, yet even in the end of the novel, after a crushing birth of a still born baby, the fragment of the Joad family that still remains donates some food to a homeless man who has even less than them.This goodness was always a part of the Joads, and every other "Okie" who inhabited that Oklahoma country. So, in that way it represents the goodness inherent in human beings. But during the book the landscape is undergoing a crisis. Farmers have stripped the soil of nutrients and drought has created massive dust storms. At the same time farmers are being pushed off their land by banks, who seek to consolidate their land holdings and make their farming operations more profitable. This represented a degradation of human character, greed driving good people away from their homes and land. This was represented in easily by the land, look at what had happened to it in the novel, and that is what Steinbeck suggests has happened to the moral integrity of those who take advantage of others. 

     The Oklahoman country represents both sides of humanity, the good and the bad, while the Californian countryside represents the hope that is necessary to persevere in our less than ideal world.