GOW+Chapter+11

Focus questions



=Chapter 11=

In chapter 11 Steinbeck explains how the vacant town is dying. All the houses are vacant because the families were forced off the land. The bank corporations (aka government) forced anyone who owned a farm in the midwest. They paid people to drive tractors through the farms to get them to leave. Their own people were driving them off their land for the sake of getting money to feed the children. They decide to travel west to the orange fields in California to get away from the threat of their homes being demolished.
 * Overall Plot:**

-He argues that the governement and society should have done something to prevent this from happening to families all across the midwest. -He underlines that the government was responsible for the families across the midwest who were homeless and forced to travel west to get work to provide for their family -The government should have done something to prevent the country from living in lawlessness and corruption between eachother for jobs
 * Overall Argument:**

-He sets up the subject of the chapter by explaing how the farm houses and land are collecting dust and falling apart and the connection between a man and his land -The families have lived on these farms their whole lifes and now they are being forced off by their own people -The families can't understand how their own people could drive them out for money. This portrays how the country in the 1930's was so poor they would do anything for money and food for their children -His descriptions help to convey the foreshadowing of the events to come in the rest of the novel -He clarifies the connection between a man and his land, and how the land is a part of the man. If the man dies, so does the land. By explaining this connection he foreshadows the death of Grampa -Grampa's Death-since he was forced to leave the land Grampa is slowly dying as they vacant land is slowly dying with the lack of humanity
 * Rhetorical Structure and Analysis:**

-"For nirates are not that land, nor phosphates and the length of fiber in the cotton is not that land. carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calicum. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis." (Page 115) -The land is not just elements of nature and man is not just elements of chemistry; the land and man are much more than their exterior -"When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land." (Page 116) -The men that are working on the land have no connection to land or their work, every day they come to drive tractors through the land and then go home, the seperation between work and life causes the men to loose wonder for their work -"A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it." (Page 116) -The houses were so vacant and dead, only the little animals disturbed its peaceful decaying; the human elements of the town slowly floated away in the wind -"Fella gets use' to a place, it's hard to go, Fella gets use' to a way a thinkin', it's hard to leave. I ain't a preacher no more, but all the time I find I'm prayin', not even thinkin' what I'm doin'." (Page 51) -It was difficult for the family to leave the land their family has been living on for generations -"But when the motor of a tractor stops...the heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse." (Page 115) -He uses literal descriptions of death to portray the deterioration of the town. He uses literal descriptions of death to portray the deterioration of the town.
 * Sensoring Details in the Text:**

-Thetone is sympathetic and the mood is dark and mournful -Its effect upon the reader is to give them a relaxed feel, the feeling of the land slowly dying and withering away -The author wants the reader to understand the death of the vacant town; once the family left the town began to die -He also wants the reader to understand the choater is foreshadowing events that will happen in the next chapter -"There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life...the heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse." (Page 115) -The mood of the chapter is very dark and mournful, becuase it foreshadows sarrow and hardships for the families -"And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken windows." (Page 117) -The tone of the chapter is sympathetic, becuase the town is empty and slowly dying -The tone expresses the sympathy the author has for the town thats dying and the families who are leaving and will endure those pains along their journey
 * Mood and Tone:**


 * Citations:**

<"The Grapes of Wrath." SparkNotes. 2006. SparkNotes LLC.. 21 Mar 2008. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/grapesofwrath/section4.rhtml>

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