Discussion Question 5-The Grapes of Wrath

5. This book does a great job of showing the history of its time period. As you read you can tell the times are different from what they are now. Food was scarce and jobs were very hard to find. Most work was manual labor. Money was hard to earn, but very easy to spend. They travelled in order to live. When times were rough, they did not just leave each other, they always had their family to turn to. I really connected with the history of this book because the same things are somewhat happening today. Money has become a lot tighter and many people are searching for jobs in this difficult economy. Each day our food prices raise and it is still easy to spend money but very valuable to earn. The behavior of the characters really reflects the time period because a lot of things that were done in the story would not be as tolerated today. Multiple times the book talked about people stealing from the gas station and people would not do anything, or protests would take place outside of the gates, or the police would kick people out of their homes and towns for no reason. The behavior today is more sophisticated and controlled where as the behavior in the story is wild and usually occurred on a whim. Rage overtook Tommy a lot of the time and he made some pretty unsafe decisions. He put his family at risk each time he was outraged. Today, an outrage like Tommy’s would send the person to jail without even getting the chance to run away or explain oneself. The symbolic significance of the book is hope. The turtle in the beginning is the first sign of hope for the Joad family. From then on, through each triumph and downfall, they had hope. The thematic significance of the book is the family’s religion and strength throughout their journey. The underlying block for their hope really started with their religion. Having the preacher on the journey with them helped them to explore their religion a little more and once the preacher was gone, they continued in their religion and that gave the family more hope for the future.