Grapes of Wrath Final Essay

Descri be how Steinbeck's description of the characters and setting establish a specific tone for the novel.

Throughout the whole novel of The Grapes of Wrath the author describes each character with a vast amount of detail, which made the book hard to read and quite boring. The tone of the book was set exactly like the description of all the characters, the book was long, boring, and too detailed.

The book is 450 pages long, it’s filled with some chapters about random things like dust, a turtle crossing the street, and a gas station. When reading, the length wouldn’t normally be an issue but in this book every chapter was a chore strictly for the fact that there was way too much description.

“In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels

milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the

ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every

moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man

lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the

dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a

cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again.”

This is a snippet from the first chapter. The first chapter is entirely about dust and the fields that the farmers worked. This chapter wasn’t very long but it was redundant and too descriptive of something that could have been explained in maybe a page or two. It’s the start of the book and it’s already redundant, that shows that Steinbeck’s style of writing is going to be well drawn out with lots of chapters and statements that aren’t needed in the long run.

“He was not over thirty. His eyes were very dark

brown and there was a hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs.

His cheek bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines

cut down his cheeks, in curves beside his mouth. His upper

lip was long, and since his teeth protruded, the lips stretched

to cover them, for this man kept his lips closed. His hands

were hard, with broad fingers and nails as thick and ridged

as little clam shells. The space between thumb and forefinger

and the hams of his hands were shiny with callus.

The man's clothes were new all of them, cheap and new.

His gray cap was so new that the visor was still stiff and the

button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would be when

it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap-

carrying sack, towel, handkerchief. His suit was of cheap

gray hardcloth and so new that there were creases in the

trousers. His blue chambray shirt was stiff and smooth with

filler. The coat was too big, the trousers too short, for he

was a tall man. The coat shoulder peaks hung down on his

arms, and even then the sleeves were too short and the front

of the coat flapped loosely over his stomach. He wore a

pair of new tan shoes of the kind called "army last," hob-

nailed and with half-circles like horseshoes to protect the

edges of the heels from wear.”

This is a quote from the second chapter of the book. It’s rather long isn’t it? It’s a description of a small character that goes away after chapter two, a meaningless character. This is an example of way too descriptive, it’s so descriptive that it loses its affect and makes the description into something confusing and difficult to follow. As you can see from the quote above, there is way too much description of a simple thing, and obviously judging by how insignificant the person being described is, it shows that for things that actually matter the author will describe in even more detail setting the tone to be very long and tedious.

Going farther into the book to the third chapter, the author leaves hints as to exactly how this book is going to go. The entire chapter is about a turtle crossing a street. The chapter isn’t exactly long but the topic it was about made it seem a lot longer. The turtle was just trying to cross the street and it was having such a difficult time which foreshadowed how the Joad family would last on their way to California. The challenges they faced were way over exaggerated because the author just blended all the problems that were possible into one family which made it seem like they were going to hell and back. The turtles travel was long and the chapter itself was very descriptive down to the last little detail which showed that the entire book was going to follow it’s example and be descriptive down to the last detail, even about things that didn’t matter. It also foreshadowed that their trip was going to be a long and eventful one.

“The concrete highway was edged with a mat of

tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were

heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog's coat, and

foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to

fasten in sheep's wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and

dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal,

twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and

balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the

wind, for a man's trouser cuff or the hem of a woman's skirt,

all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but

each possessed of the anlage of movement. “

This is the first sentence of chapter three. Many of the things that were said could have been taken out and kept the same meaning of the sentence. This is more proof of over descriptive and setting the tone of the book as slow and boring.

When describing the first main character you meet in the book, Tom, the author uses quite a strange way of going about it. He draws out his description over a period of numerous different chapters. In the second one you learn about him from the point of view of a truck driver who picks him up off the side of the road. Then in chapter four your learn about him when he meets Casy and they start talking about life and what they had both been through. Even more when Tom and Casy meet up with the rest of the Joads in chapter eight. The description foreshadowed that the book was going to be drawn out with information spread out vastly over numerous chapters. Its not a style of writing or description that I enjoy but thats how Steinbeck wrote it.

In conclusion, John Steinbeck used way too much descriptive language that took away from the books power and impact. The way he described characters was either very drawn out or too much to understand exactly what he’s trying to say. The setting he was trying to establish was too bland and too made up with all the things that happened to the Joad family that it took away from the book. From all the descriptions and what not, the setting of the book was determined in the beginning to be slow, redundant, boring, and over descriptive and it was proven many times throughout the book.