Grapes of Wrath

             John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, a remarkable novel that greatly embodied the entire uprisal of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. The usage of imagery and symbolism help to support his many different themes running through the course of the novel. His use of language assisted in personifying the many trials and tribulations which the Joad family, and the rest of the United States, was feeling at the time. This was a time of great confusion and chaos because no one really knew what the other was going through, they were all just trying to hold their own. To display the many sides of the depression Steinbeck developed the use of intercallorie chapters, and he also manipulated them to posses many other functions; all of these adding to the many images and themes which he was insistent upon getting across to his readers, using a vast collection of techniques.
             One of Steinbeck's favorite uses of language was the use of imagery. He used colors, animals, and people as his main sources of imagery. The most reoccurring images of color were red and grey. He used this to develop the reader into sensing the harshness, and yet the incredible dullness of the scenery, using red as the sun and grey as the land, at times interchanging. "In the grey sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn"(5). Steinbeck used his color imagery to display the almost separation of the two different worlds between the land, symbolically and literally." ...the grey country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover"(3). His use of red and grey represent the slow wearing away of the land and its people. "The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the !
             earth became pale, pink in the re...

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Grapes of Wrath . (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 19:19, July 01, 2025, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/59029.html