John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath:

The Top Ten Motifs

Nature as Antagonist

• "The women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained." page 6

Strength of the Family

• And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break. Page 6

• “You should of went too. You shouldn’t of broke up the fambly.” Jim Casey, page 65

Individual vs. The Corporate Machine

• “But sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.” Tom Joad, page 11

Turtle as a Symbol

• “Nobody can’t keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they go out and away they go—off somewheres. It’s like me.” Jim Casey, page 28

• Turning Hardship Into Prosperity. Page 22

Transcendentalism

• the philosophical ideas of Emerson and some other 19th-cent. New Englanders, based on a search for reality through spiritual intuition

• “Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe, maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.” Jim Casey, page 33

Individual vs. Group

• “Why, you're Joe Davis' boy!… What you doing this kind of work for—against your own people-Three dollars a day…I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day and it comes every day.-That is right … But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can't eat at all…-Can' t think of that. Got to think of my own kids.” page 50

Oppression that leads to Wrath

• “But where does it stop? Who can you shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.” page 52

Moral Obligation to Help Others

• "You sharin' with us, Muley Graves?" he asked. Muley fidgeted in embarrassment. "I ain't got no choice in the matter." page 66

Agrarianism

• a social or political movement designed to bring about land reforms or to improve the economic status of the farmer

Man’s Connection to the Land

• “An’ I put my han’ on that groun’ where my own pa’s blood is part of it.” Muley Graves, page 69

Works Cited

• Agrarianism. Dictionary Definitions. Web. 30 September 2010. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agrarianism>

• Roadside Photo. FSA-OWI Collection. 30 September 2010.<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html>

• transcendentalism."Dictionary Definitions. LoveToKnow, n.d. Web. 24 September 2010.

<http://www.yourdictionary.com/transcendentalism>.