Grapes of Wrath- 2

The conflict in this book was probably the best in the three books I read for blogging this summer, so this blog should be pretty easy to write compared to the others. There were a lot of causes, gains, and losses discussed in this book.

The main cause of this conflict was "the man," or more personally, the bank. The bad weather caused the destroying of the crops and then the farmers were not able to pay the bank. The bank then just shut everything down. The people caused the bank a monster. They talked about how it was to blame for all of their problems. If it was not for the bank, the farmers could have stayed on their farms. They would not have had to rush to California and be overpopulated. That is what forced the conflict on.

There were so many hardships and not enough gains. As one of my friend's mentioned, the hope of society would be a gain. They never gave up and kept hoping to get on with their lives. They wanted to be happy and successful again. They wanted to start over and get a good society running.

There were plenty of losses, though. For example, The Joads and all the other farmers lost their farms. Since they lost their farms, they had no jobs and no hope. After moving to California and getting new jobs, they lost those too. There were so many losses that it was depressing. I just kept hoping for a win throughout the whole story. Every time something good happened, something bad came and made everything worse again.

Another big thing the farmers lost was their dignity. All the California people treated them horribly, almost like slaves. They were treated differently from everyone else.

Also, faith in humanity was lost for a little while. For example, when the bank failed the farmers, they gave up in their society a little. I know I did and I was not even involved.

Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006.