Despite this good treatment, however, he notes that the lack of women made life hard. As Tom prepares to continue toward his home, Casy asks if he can come along. Tom welcomes him, and comments that the Joads always thought highly of their preacher. They walk to the farm, but upon arriving at the site, they realize it has been deserted. The landowners and the banks, unable to make high profits from tenant farming, evict the farmers from the land. Tenant farming is an agricultural system in which farmers rent farmland from a land owner.
Some of the property owners are cruel, some are kind, but they all deliver the same news: the farmers must leave. The farmers protest, complaining that they have nowhere to go. The owners suggest they go to California, where there is work to be done.
Tractors arrive on the land, with orders to plow the property, crushing anything in their paths—including, if necessary, the farmhouse. Livid, the displaced farmers yearn to fight back, but the banks are so faceless, impersonal, and inhuman that they cannot be fought against.
Tom and Casy find the Joad homestead strangely untouched, other than a section of the farmhouse that has been crushed. The presence of usable materials and tools on the premises, apparently unscavenged, signifies to Tom that the neighbors, too, must have deserted their farms. Even with the push from his wife and the rest of the family, he would not budge on his stance on selling his land. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality.
After spending a number of years in one place, it is very human to become attached. This is especially true with farmers. They spend their lives learning the land around them.
The land becomes a friend to them, having almost human value. In the novel The Grapes of Wrath , author John Steinbeck conveys the connection people have with their land, without which they feel they cannot survive mentally or physically. All humans think of a home as a place for comfort. Even though I have lived in different places, my home right now is where I feel I belong. In The Grapes of Wrath, the Oklahoma farmers feel they belong to the land and do not want to leave it.
In response to Muley Graves' refusal to leave, Jim Casy says, "' Fella gets use' to a place, its hard to go'" Muley's refusal to leave shows that he is physically and emotionally attached to the land he farmed before his eviction. It is illegal for him to remain on the land; yet, he cannot bring himself to leave his home. The land has become a part of him.
Human beings also can become proprietary about their land. They believe that the land belongs to them, and they belong to it. Before the Joad family is finished packing , Grampa decides he does not want to leave. He says, "'This country ain't no good, but its my country.
Chapter 8. Tom has been awoken early by Muley , who fearfully warns them to get off the land by daybreak. As he and Casy Chapter Muley comes by to pay his respects to the family before they leave. Pa offers Muley Cite This Page. Home About Story Contact Help. Muley takes Tom and Casy to a small cave to hide for the night, but Tom chooses to sleep outdoors. They plan to move on to Uncle John's in the morning. In Chapter 6, the generalized actions of the previous chapter are made concrete.
The young tractor driver now has a name, Willy Feeley, and just as the tenant's house is knocked off its foundation at the end of the last chapter, so now the Joad house is found crumpled at the corner. The threat of the faceless farmer to use his gun is materialized in Muley's news that Granpa actually shot out a tractor's headlights. Muley Graves' statement, "Place where folks live is them folks. They ain't whole, out lonely on the road.
They ain't alive no more," not only reiterates the plea of the tenant in Chapter 5, it points out the moral deterioration that is a parallel result of economic decline. Muley physically reinforces Casy's theory of love: All persons are a part of the same spirit, and a refusal to unite together effectively disassociates an individual from the whole. In contrast to the betrayal of the tractor driver in the last chapter, who will feed his own children while others go hungry, Muley finds that he must share his meal.
0コメント