Émile Zola was an influential French writer. He was born in Paris in 1840. He is the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism, an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He is also a major figure in the political liberalisation of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.
J’Accuse was one of the most controversial articles written by Zola. "In making these accusations, I am fully aware that my action comes under Articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881 on the press, which makes libel a punishable offence," Zola wrote challenging. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a French Jewish army officer, who was falsely charged with giving military secrets to the Germans. The trials quickly developed into a ideological struggle, or as Anatole France wrote, "rendered an inestimable service to the country by bringing out and little by little revealing the forces of past and the forces of future: on the one side bourgeois authoritarianism and Catholic theocracy; on the other side socialism and free thought." Dreyfus was transported to Devil's Island in French Guiana. The case was tried again in 1899 and he was found first guilty and pardoned, but later the verdict was reversed. "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it," Zola announced, but during the process he was sentenced in 1898 to imprisonment and removed from the roll of the Legion of Honour. He escaped to England, and returned after Dreyfus had been cleared.
Zola died on September 28, in 1902, under mysterious circumstances, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes in his sleep. According to some speculations, Zola's enemies blocked the chimney of his apartment, causing poisonous fumes to build up and kill him. At Zola's funeral Anatole France declared, "He was a moment of the human conscience." In 1908 Zola's remains were transported to the Panthéon. Naturalism as a literary movement fell out of favour after Zola's death, but his integrity had a profound influence on such writers as Theodore Dreiser, August Strindberg and Emilia Pardo-Bazan.
European Marxism, 1848-1989
'A specter is haunting Europe -the specter of Communism,'' wrote Karl Marx in January 1848. It took a century for that red specter to become iron-grey reality in Eastern Europe. Yet just weeks after the 29-year-old German philosophy student wrote those words, Europe was swamped by a continental wave of liberal, nationalist revolutions. The upheavals of 1848 gave birth to European Marxism. Now, a strikingly similar wave of revolutions appears to signal its death.
The events of 1848 began with January revolts in Austria's Italian provinces. The movement gained force in February, when mass demonstrations in Paris forced France's last Bourbon King to abdicate. Vienna's turn came in March. Crowds in the Hapsburg capital brought down the mighty Prince Metternich, architect and symbol of Central Europe's post-Napoleonic order. The protest drew strength from enthusiastic university students. The Prince was gone in a matter of mere days.
Marxists reassured themselves that history was on their side that continued industrial revolution would bring political and social revolution as well. They envisioned an ever-larger army of workers, turned into socialists by the circumstances of proletarian life, who would finally cast off capitalist chains and harness industry's power for social ends. Such was the Communism that so recently haunted much of Europe. But, in an irony that Marx the revolutionary might have appreciated, the system bred its own gravediggers. Instead of the hoped-for socialist man, Communist rule produced a new generation of democratic revolutionaries, whom four decades of frustration made all the more committed to liberal freedoms. Today, the Communist states are the faltering ''old regimes.'
The Gold Rush started at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma On January 24, 1848 James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found pieces of shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter, along the American River. Marshall quietly brought what he found to Sutter, and the two of them privately tested the findings. The tests showed Marshall's particles to be gold. Sutter was dismayed by this, and wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold. However, rumours soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies, Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" With the news of gold, many families trying their luck at Californian farming decided to go for the gold, becoming some of California’s first miners.
On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report that there was a gold rush in California; on December 5, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode." As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters invaded his land and stole his crops and cattle.
The Prussians surrounded and besieged Paris during the terrible winter of 1870-1871, beating off French armies raised in the rest of the country. Parisians suffered starvation, bombardments and disease, and balloons and pigeon post provided the only contact with the outside. British public opinion switched from support of Prussia to sympathy for the French. Paris was surrendered and the Prussians entered the city on March 1 1871. The new government of President Thiers passed legislation demanding rents from Parisians and withdrawing the pay of the National Guards. The government was established at Versailles. It tried to seize the cannon belonging to the city. The insurrection in Paris began in March when the Parisians kept their cannon by force. The Commune was proclaimed on 28 March, with its seat in the Hôtel de Ville, and its symbol the red flag. A civil war was fought between the Commune and the troops of the Versailles government. The Commune was suppressed by government troops during the last week of May 1871, known as the 'Semaine sanglante'.
It is difficult to categorise Hume’s political affiliations. His thought contains elements that are, in modern terms, both conservative and liberal, as well as ones that are both contractarian and utilitarian, though these terms are all anachronistic. His central concern is to show the importance of the rule of law, and stresses throughout his political Essays the importance of moderation in politics. This outlook needs to be seen within the historical context of eighteenth century Scotland, where the legacy of religious civil war, combined with the relatively recent memory of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings, fostered in a historian. Hume formed a distaste for enthusiasm and factionalism that appeared to threaten the fragile and nascent political and social stability of a country that was deeply politically and religiously divided. He thinks that society is best governed by a general and impartial system of laws, based principally on the "artifice" of contract; he is less concerned about the form of government that administers these laws.
Hegelian dialectic
It is Hegel’s well-known achievement to have introduced the fully developed notion of a dialectical movement through a necessary progression. Rather than being the result of a confrontation between two independently existing entities, thesis and antithesis, the dialectical movement in Hegel’s thought appears more as an internal potential or as a necessary movement due to latent contradictions inherent to all entities, mental and material. In his sweeping overview, ranging from logic to history and world affairs, Hegel tries to show that each finite entity has within itself the germ of its own negation. This negation, however, does not lead to actual destruction but to sublation (Aufhebung) into a higher entity, the synthesis.
Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being; but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing; yet both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming, when it is realised that what is coming into being is, at the same time, also returning to nothing (consider life: Old organisms die as new organisms are created or born). Existence is the synthesis of two opposites – at the teleological historic and cosmic level.
Though Hegel rarely uses the terms of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, he uses a variety of triadic expressions, such as affirmation, negation, negation of negation; in-itself, for itself, in-and-for-itself. Hegel insists that the true meaning of the dialectic had been lost for most of philosophy’s history. For him, Kant rediscovered the triad, but in his thought it remained “lifeless.” Since, for Kant, ultimate reality was still perceived as transcendent and unreachable, it could not possibly yield a conclusive synthesis. Hegel attempted to move the dialectic back into the mainstream with the idea that it was the Absolute itself that gradually achieved full self-awareness through a dialectical movement culminating with the human mind.
Hegel uses the term speculation to describe the process by which the hidden progress of the dialectic is made explicit in philosophy. In his thought, therefore, speculation has an entirely positive connotation.
Marx on Hegel’s dialectic - “Dialectical Materialism” K. Marx calls his system “dialectical material” (e.g., in his book The German Ideology) or sometimes “the materialist conception of history”.
Karl Marx (The Young Hegelians) – embraced the idea of change in Hegel, because they were liberals, and revolutionaries in the wake of the French revolution. They loved the idea ‘everything changes’ – only change is permanent (this much has stuck from Hegel) – it anticipates quantum mechanics for example where we now think that the very act of making an observation changes the nature of matter.
Marx agrees, but goes forward. All philosophy to date (inc. Hegel and Feuebach) is a waste of time when it is a matter of contemplation and reflection. Humans act upon the world, and this action is the source of knowledge – it neither arises like a Zeit (Hegel) from matter; nor does it exist in a platonic realm of eternal ideas (such as the idea of god). Knowledge arises when humans act upon the world.
The state both Hegel and Marx see as the vehicle of historical change. The state is an instrument for the domination of one class by another; thus democracy is a sham – he sees it in term of Machievlli (it is the dictatorship of capital – “the iron fist inside the velvet glove” – revealed during 1848 (and especially 1870 – the Paris Commune which brings us to the milieu of Zola. In history there are two different types of people there is the Thesis which is the Ruling Class. The Antithesis which was the Slave Class/Working Class. This is what leads to the Synthesis, which is the revolution
Idealism is a philosophical movement in Western thought, and names a number of philosophical positions with sometimes quite different tendencies and implications in politics and ethics, for instance; although in general, at least in popular culture, philosophical idealism is associated with Plato and the school of Platonism.
Materialism holds that only things that exist is what matters; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism and to spiritualism.
Instrumentalism is more of a pragmatic approach to science, information and theories than an ontological statement. Often instrumentalists (like pragmatists) have been accused of being relativists, even though many instrumentalists are also believers in sturdy objective realism.
Germinal was Zola's masterpiece.14 whereas L'Assommoir had shown a working class just emerging from an older world of small workshops, Germinal shifted to the coal mining industry, a central source of energy for France's developing capitalism. Mining, with a large, disciplined labour force herded into pit villages and facing the dangers of underground work, produced a class for which solidarity was the key value.
The novel took its title from a month in the revolutionary calendar introduced in 1792. Germinal fell in springtime (March-April), the month of germination and hope; but on 12 Germinal Year III (1 April 1795) hungry crowds had rioted, demanding 'bread and the 1793 constitution'. The events of Germinal inspired Babeuf, the first revolutionary socialist, to establish his secret organisation of Equals. In the novel Zola argued that the bourgeoisie, having made its own revolution, now wished to suppress any further revolution from below.
While academics often miss the point about Germinal, it has been properly appreciated in the working class movement. During the 1984-1985 British miners' strike a militant miner saw direct parallels between the novel and the current struggle. There are many similarities between the events in the book and what is happening in the current miners' strike. In both cases management provoked the strike deliberately, confident that the miners would lose, in order that they could reinforce their power. Both sets of miners put too much faith in one man, Etienne and Scargill. The French miners paid the price, defeat. Although the miners were beaten by lack of organisation, hunger and bullets, they were changed by the struggle. No longer content to accept their lot in life, the seeds of revolt were sown.
Various Sources Used
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Politics and English Language: George Orwell
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language — so the arguments runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
Source from Politics And The English Language
by George Orwell.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
Source from Politics And The English Language
by George Orwell.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Citizen Kane
Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), the enormously wealthy media magnate, has lost his power and been abandoned by his loved ones, and has been living alone in his vast palatial estate Xanadu for the last years of his life, with a "No trespassing" sign on the gate. He dies in a bed holding a snow globe, and utters "Rosebud..." before his death.
Kane's death then becomes sensational news around the world. Reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) tries to find out about Kane's private life and, in particular, to discover the meaning behind his last word. The reporter interviews the great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a series of flashbacks. Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), now an alcoholic who runs her own club, but she refuses to tell him anything. Thompson then goes to the private archive of Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), a deceased banker who served as Kane's guardian during his childhood. It is through Thatcher's written memoirs that Thompson learns about Kane's childhood. Thompson then interviews Kane's personal business manager Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), best friend Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Susan for a second time, and Kane's butler Raymond (Paul Stewart).
In several flashbacks, it is told that Kane's childhood was spent in poverty (his parents ran a boarding house), then changed when the "world's third largest gold mine" was discovered on an apparently worthless property his mother had acquired (the title deeds left to her by a lodger unable to pay his bill). He is forced to leave his beloved mother (Agnes Moorehead) when she sends him away to live with Thatcher, to be both educated and protected from his abusive father. After gaining full control over his possessions at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business with sensationalized yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer, and hires all the best journalists (he hires them away from the Chronicle, the main rival of the Inquirer). His attempted rise to power is documented, including his manipulation of public opinion for the Spanish American War of 1898; his first marriage to Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), a President's niece; and his campaign for the office of governor of New York State in which Kane creates alternative newspaper headlines depending on whether he wins.
Kane's life gradually goes downhill. The relationship between him and his wife disintegrates over the years. A "love nest" scandal with Susan Alexander ends both his first marriage and his political aspirations. Kane marries his mistress, but as a result of his domineering personality, he forces Susan into an operatic career for which she has no talent or ambition, destroys his relationships and pushes away his loved ones. Kane spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone after Susan leaves him, interacting only with his staff.
Thompson is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that "Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it: Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost". In the ending of the film, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud was the name of the sled from Kane's childhood, from the time before he was taken from his parents and gained his wealth. The sled, thought to be junk, is destroyed by Xanadu's departing staff in a basement furnace. The film ends as it began, with a view of the "No Trespassing" sign posted on the fence of Xanadu
Kane's death then becomes sensational news around the world. Reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) tries to find out about Kane's private life and, in particular, to discover the meaning behind his last word. The reporter interviews the great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a series of flashbacks. Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), now an alcoholic who runs her own club, but she refuses to tell him anything. Thompson then goes to the private archive of Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), a deceased banker who served as Kane's guardian during his childhood. It is through Thatcher's written memoirs that Thompson learns about Kane's childhood. Thompson then interviews Kane's personal business manager Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), best friend Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Susan for a second time, and Kane's butler Raymond (Paul Stewart).
In several flashbacks, it is told that Kane's childhood was spent in poverty (his parents ran a boarding house), then changed when the "world's third largest gold mine" was discovered on an apparently worthless property his mother had acquired (the title deeds left to her by a lodger unable to pay his bill). He is forced to leave his beloved mother (Agnes Moorehead) when she sends him away to live with Thatcher, to be both educated and protected from his abusive father. After gaining full control over his possessions at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business with sensationalized yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer, and hires all the best journalists (he hires them away from the Chronicle, the main rival of the Inquirer). His attempted rise to power is documented, including his manipulation of public opinion for the Spanish American War of 1898; his first marriage to Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), a President's niece; and his campaign for the office of governor of New York State in which Kane creates alternative newspaper headlines depending on whether he wins.
Kane's life gradually goes downhill. The relationship between him and his wife disintegrates over the years. A "love nest" scandal with Susan Alexander ends both his first marriage and his political aspirations. Kane marries his mistress, but as a result of his domineering personality, he forces Susan into an operatic career for which she has no talent or ambition, destroys his relationships and pushes away his loved ones. Kane spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone after Susan leaves him, interacting only with his staff.
Thompson is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that "Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it: Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost". In the ending of the film, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud was the name of the sled from Kane's childhood, from the time before he was taken from his parents and gained his wealth. The sled, thought to be junk, is destroyed by Xanadu's departing staff in a basement furnace. The film ends as it began, with a view of the "No Trespassing" sign posted on the fence of Xanadu
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Freud, Modernism and Literature
It would be hard to give a precise and succinct definition of the term Modernism, as there was, unlike movements such as the Surrealists or the Futurists, no organised group and no manifesto.
What distinguishes the Modernist novel is its experimental nature. Modernist literature has a tendency to lack traditional chronological narrative, break narrative frames or move from one level of narrative to another without any warning through the words of a number of different narrators. It may also be self-reflexive about the act of writing and the nature of literature. Much use is made of the stream of consciousness technique and focusing on a character's consciousness and subconscious - the writings of Sigmund Freud were highly influential on the movement - is a recurring technique. Unlike the literature of the 19th century, there is a breaking down of the traditional beginning-middle-end linear narrative in the Modernist novel, leaving an impression of enigma and an open-endedness to the work.
In poetry, rhyme and traditional form were frequently overthrown, and fragmentation, deliberate obscurity and the juxtaposition of images from seemingly unrelated ages and cultures were often featured.
Emerging in France during the last quarter of the 19th century with movements such as Naturalism, Symbolism, Decadence and Aestheticism, early Modernist work began to appear in Britain and America from the 1890s and it remained an influential force right up until the Second World War.
Although the Decadent poets of the 1890s, such as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and W.B. Yeats, who were all influenced by the writings of the likes of Baudelaiure, Mallarm and Valry, had made use of elements of what would later be called Modernism, it was the work of the American Henry James that really signalled the new direction in literature at the end of the 19th century. Other authors whose work moved in this direction around the same time were Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. The works of all these writers were experimental in their structure. They were also engaged with themes of fin de sicle anxiety, such as imperialism, urban chaos and paranoia.
James Joyce is perhaps the ultimate Modernist. His masterly work Ulysses (1922) focuses on just one day in the life of two people, using multiple narrators, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, literary parody and stylistic changes. Few have managed successfully to follow his lead, but his influence can be felt in the works of writers such Flann O'Brien and Malcolm Lowry, whose Under the Volcano takes place over the course of a single day.
D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf were both heavily influenced by Freud. Woolf, in novels such as Mrs Dalloway and The Years, employed much structural experimentation, while Lawrence, though using more traditional narrative forms, was poetic and emotional in style and daring in his subject matter.
The most important Modernist poets were the Americans T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and the Irishman W.B. Yeats. Eliot's The wasteland is a perfect example of Modernist techniques, with its juxtaposition of fragments and different forms and techniques, its use of intertextuality and its bleak urban settings.
In the 1930s Modernist writers became more overtly political, especially in their involvement with left-wing causes and there opposition the rise of Fascism in Europe. Key writers of this period were the poets W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender and the writers Christopher Isherwood and C. Day-Lewis.
What distinguishes the Modernist novel is its experimental nature. Modernist literature has a tendency to lack traditional chronological narrative, break narrative frames or move from one level of narrative to another without any warning through the words of a number of different narrators. It may also be self-reflexive about the act of writing and the nature of literature. Much use is made of the stream of consciousness technique and focusing on a character's consciousness and subconscious - the writings of Sigmund Freud were highly influential on the movement - is a recurring technique. Unlike the literature of the 19th century, there is a breaking down of the traditional beginning-middle-end linear narrative in the Modernist novel, leaving an impression of enigma and an open-endedness to the work.
In poetry, rhyme and traditional form were frequently overthrown, and fragmentation, deliberate obscurity and the juxtaposition of images from seemingly unrelated ages and cultures were often featured.
Emerging in France during the last quarter of the 19th century with movements such as Naturalism, Symbolism, Decadence and Aestheticism, early Modernist work began to appear in Britain and America from the 1890s and it remained an influential force right up until the Second World War.
Although the Decadent poets of the 1890s, such as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and W.B. Yeats, who were all influenced by the writings of the likes of Baudelaiure, Mallarm and Valry, had made use of elements of what would later be called Modernism, it was the work of the American Henry James that really signalled the new direction in literature at the end of the 19th century. Other authors whose work moved in this direction around the same time were Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. The works of all these writers were experimental in their structure. They were also engaged with themes of fin de sicle anxiety, such as imperialism, urban chaos and paranoia.
James Joyce is perhaps the ultimate Modernist. His masterly work Ulysses (1922) focuses on just one day in the life of two people, using multiple narrators, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, literary parody and stylistic changes. Few have managed successfully to follow his lead, but his influence can be felt in the works of writers such Flann O'Brien and Malcolm Lowry, whose Under the Volcano takes place over the course of a single day.
D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf were both heavily influenced by Freud. Woolf, in novels such as Mrs Dalloway and The Years, employed much structural experimentation, while Lawrence, though using more traditional narrative forms, was poetic and emotional in style and daring in his subject matter.
The most important Modernist poets were the Americans T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and the Irishman W.B. Yeats. Eliot's The wasteland is a perfect example of Modernist techniques, with its juxtaposition of fragments and different forms and techniques, its use of intertextuality and its bleak urban settings.
In the 1930s Modernist writers became more overtly political, especially in their involvement with left-wing causes and there opposition the rise of Fascism in Europe. Key writers of this period were the poets W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender and the writers Christopher Isherwood and C. Day-Lewis.
Steinbeck
The American novelist, storywriter, playwright named John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He is best remembered for THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939), a novel widely considered to be a 20th-century classic. The impact of the book has been compared to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Steinbeck's epic about the migration of the Joad family, driven from its bit of land in Oklahoma to California, provoked a wide debate about the hard lot of migrant labourers, and helped to put an agricultural reform into effect.
"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up in the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments." (from The Grapes of Wrath)
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His native region of Monterey Bay was later the setting for most of his fiction. "We were poor people with a hell of a lot of land which made us think we were rich people," the author once recalled. Steinbeck's father was a county treasurer. From his mother, a teacher, Steinbeck learned to love books. Among his early favourites were Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Le Morte d'Arthur.
Steinbeck attended the local high school and worked on farms and ranches during his vacations. To finance his education, he held many jobs and sometimes dropped out of college for whole quarters. Between 1920 and 1926, he studied marine biology at Stanford University, but did not take a degree-he always planned to be a writer. Several of his early poems and short stories appeared in university publications. After spending a short time as a labourer on the construction of Madison Square Garden in New York City and reporter for the American, Steinbeck returned to California. While writing, Steinbeck took odd jobs. He was apprenticehood-carrier, apprentice painter, caretaker of an estate, surveyor, and fruit-picker. During a period, when he was as a watchman of a house in the High Sierra, Steinbeck wrote his first book, CUP OF GOLD (1929). It failed to earn back the $250 the publisher had given him in an advance.
In Pacific Grove in the early 1930s, Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts. He was a marine biologist, whose views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced Steinbeck's thinking. THE SEA OF CORTEZ (1941) resulted from an expedition in the Gulf of California he made with Ricketts.
Steinbeck's first three novels went unnoticed, but his humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans, TORTILLA FLAT (1935), brought him wider recognition. The theme of the book-the story of King Arthur and the forming of the Round Table, which was well hidden from the readers and critics as well. However, Steinbeck's financial situation improved significantly-he had earned $35 a week for a long time, but now he was paid thousands of dollars for the film rights to Tortilla Flat.
For The Grapes of Wrath- the title originated from Julia Ward Howe's The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861)-Steinbeck travelled around California migrant camps in 1936. When the book appeared, it was attacked by US Congressman Lyle Boren, who characterised it as "a lie, a black, infernal creation of twisted, distorted mind". Later, when Steinbeck received his Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy called it simply "an epic chronicle." The Exodus story of Okies on their way to an uncertain future in California ends with a scene in which Rose of Sharon, who has just delivered a stillborn child, suckles a starving man with her breast. "Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. 'You got to,' she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. 'There!' she said. 'There.' Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously."
John Ford's film version from 1940, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, dismissed this ending-the final images optimistically celebrate President Roosevelt's New Deal. "We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out. They can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people," says Ma Joad. Steinbeck himself was sceptical of Hollywood's faithfulness to his material. However, after seeing the film he said: "Zanuck has more than kept his word. He has a hard, straight picture in which the actors are submerged so completely that it looks and feels like a documentary film and certainly has a hard, truthful ring." Orson Welles did not like Ford's interpretation because he "made that into a story about mother love."
Fleeing publicity followed by the success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico in 1940 to film the documentary Forgotten Village. During WW II, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area. He wrote such government propaganda as the novel THE MOON IS DOWN (1942), about resistance movement in a small town occupied by the Nazis. Its film version, starring Henry Travers, Cedric Hardwicke, and Lee J. Cobb, was shot on the set of How Green Was My Valley (1941), which depicted a Welsh mining village. "Free men cannot start a war," Steinbeck wrote, "but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars." Steinbeck had visited Europe in 1937 after gaining success with Of Mice and Men, and met on a Swedish ship two Norwegians, with whom he had celebrated Norway's Independence Day. In 1943 Steinbeck moved to New York City, his home for the rest of his life. His summers the author spent at Sag Harbor. He also travelled much in Europe.
Steinbeck's twelve-year marriage to Carol Henning had ended in 1942. Next year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger; they had two sons, Thom and John. However, the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced in 1949. Steinbeck's post-war works include THE PEARL (1947), a symbolic tale of a Mexican Indian pearl diver Kino. He finds a valuable pearl which changes his life, but not in the way he did expect. Kino sees the pearl as his opportunity to better life. When the townsfolk of La Paz learn of Kino's treasury, he is soon surrounded by a greedy priest, doctor, and businessmen. Kino's family suffers series of disasters and finally he throws the pearl back into ocean. Thereafter his tragedy is legendary in the town. Thematically Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea from 1952 has much similarities with this work.
In 1950 Steinbeck married Elaine Scott, the ex-wife Randolph Scott, a Western star. Steinbeck's son John had problems in later years with drugs and alcohol; he died in 1991.
John Steinbeck died of heart attack in New York on December 20, 1968. In the posthumously published THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS (1976), Steinbeck turned his back on contemporary subjects and brought to life the Arthurian world with its ancient codes of honour. Steinbeck had started the work with enthusiasm but never finished it.
Various Sources Used
"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up in the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments." (from The Grapes of Wrath)
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. His native region of Monterey Bay was later the setting for most of his fiction. "We were poor people with a hell of a lot of land which made us think we were rich people," the author once recalled. Steinbeck's father was a county treasurer. From his mother, a teacher, Steinbeck learned to love books. Among his early favourites were Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Le Morte d'Arthur.
Steinbeck attended the local high school and worked on farms and ranches during his vacations. To finance his education, he held many jobs and sometimes dropped out of college for whole quarters. Between 1920 and 1926, he studied marine biology at Stanford University, but did not take a degree-he always planned to be a writer. Several of his early poems and short stories appeared in university publications. After spending a short time as a labourer on the construction of Madison Square Garden in New York City and reporter for the American, Steinbeck returned to California. While writing, Steinbeck took odd jobs. He was apprenticehood-carrier, apprentice painter, caretaker of an estate, surveyor, and fruit-picker. During a period, when he was as a watchman of a house in the High Sierra, Steinbeck wrote his first book, CUP OF GOLD (1929). It failed to earn back the $250 the publisher had given him in an advance.
In Pacific Grove in the early 1930s, Steinbeck met Edward Ricketts. He was a marine biologist, whose views on the interdependence of all life deeply influenced Steinbeck's thinking. THE SEA OF CORTEZ (1941) resulted from an expedition in the Gulf of California he made with Ricketts.
Steinbeck's first three novels went unnoticed, but his humorous tale of pleasure-loving Mexican-Americans, TORTILLA FLAT (1935), brought him wider recognition. The theme of the book-the story of King Arthur and the forming of the Round Table, which was well hidden from the readers and critics as well. However, Steinbeck's financial situation improved significantly-he had earned $35 a week for a long time, but now he was paid thousands of dollars for the film rights to Tortilla Flat.
For The Grapes of Wrath- the title originated from Julia Ward Howe's The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861)-Steinbeck travelled around California migrant camps in 1936. When the book appeared, it was attacked by US Congressman Lyle Boren, who characterised it as "a lie, a black, infernal creation of twisted, distorted mind". Later, when Steinbeck received his Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy called it simply "an epic chronicle." The Exodus story of Okies on their way to an uncertain future in California ends with a scene in which Rose of Sharon, who has just delivered a stillborn child, suckles a starving man with her breast. "Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. 'You got to,' she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. 'There!' she said. 'There.' Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously."
John Ford's film version from 1940, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, dismissed this ending-the final images optimistically celebrate President Roosevelt's New Deal. "We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out. They can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people," says Ma Joad. Steinbeck himself was sceptical of Hollywood's faithfulness to his material. However, after seeing the film he said: "Zanuck has more than kept his word. He has a hard, straight picture in which the actors are submerged so completely that it looks and feels like a documentary film and certainly has a hard, truthful ring." Orson Welles did not like Ford's interpretation because he "made that into a story about mother love."
Fleeing publicity followed by the success of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck went to Mexico in 1940 to film the documentary Forgotten Village. During WW II, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Great Britain and the Mediterranean area. He wrote such government propaganda as the novel THE MOON IS DOWN (1942), about resistance movement in a small town occupied by the Nazis. Its film version, starring Henry Travers, Cedric Hardwicke, and Lee J. Cobb, was shot on the set of How Green Was My Valley (1941), which depicted a Welsh mining village. "Free men cannot start a war," Steinbeck wrote, "but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars." Steinbeck had visited Europe in 1937 after gaining success with Of Mice and Men, and met on a Swedish ship two Norwegians, with whom he had celebrated Norway's Independence Day. In 1943 Steinbeck moved to New York City, his home for the rest of his life. His summers the author spent at Sag Harbor. He also travelled much in Europe.
Steinbeck's twelve-year marriage to Carol Henning had ended in 1942. Next year he married the singer Gwyndolyn Conger; they had two sons, Thom and John. However, the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced in 1949. Steinbeck's post-war works include THE PEARL (1947), a symbolic tale of a Mexican Indian pearl diver Kino. He finds a valuable pearl which changes his life, but not in the way he did expect. Kino sees the pearl as his opportunity to better life. When the townsfolk of La Paz learn of Kino's treasury, he is soon surrounded by a greedy priest, doctor, and businessmen. Kino's family suffers series of disasters and finally he throws the pearl back into ocean. Thereafter his tragedy is legendary in the town. Thematically Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea from 1952 has much similarities with this work.
In 1950 Steinbeck married Elaine Scott, the ex-wife Randolph Scott, a Western star. Steinbeck's son John had problems in later years with drugs and alcohol; he died in 1991.
John Steinbeck died of heart attack in New York on December 20, 1968. In the posthumously published THE ACTS OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS (1976), Steinbeck turned his back on contemporary subjects and brought to life the Arthurian world with its ancient codes of honour. Steinbeck had started the work with enthusiasm but never finished it.
Various Sources Used
Monday, 23 November 2009
Germinal
The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the forbidding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior - Étienne was originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890), before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise - he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.
A picture of the title page from an 1885 German edition
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871).
While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army, who repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, in a fit of anarchist fervour, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart.
The title, Germinal, is drawn from the springtime seventh month of the French Revolutionary Calendar, and is meant to evoke imagery of germination, new growth and fertility. Accordingly, Zola ends the novel on a note of hope, and one which has provided inspiration to socialist and reformist causes of all kinds throughout the years since its first publication:
"Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself."
By the time of his death, the novel had come to be recognized as his undisputed masterpiece. At his funeral crowds of workers gathered, cheering the cortège with shouts of "Germinal! Germinal!". Since then the book has come to symbolize working class causes and to this day retains a special place in French mining-town folklore.
Zola was always very proud of Germinal, and was always keen to defend its accuracy against accusations of hyperbole and exaggeration (from the conservatives) or of slander against the working classes (from the socialists). His research had been typically thorough, especially the parts involving lengthy observational visits to northern French mining towns in 1884, such as witnessing the after-effects of a crippling miners' strike first-hand at Anzin or actually going down a working coal pit at Denain. The mine scenes are especially vivid and haunting as a result.
A sensation upon original publication, it is now by far the best-selling of Zola's novels, both in France and internationally. A number of exceptional modern translations are currently in print and widely available.
A picture of the title page from an 1885 German edition
Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871).
While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army, who repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, in a fit of anarchist fervour, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart.
The title, Germinal, is drawn from the springtime seventh month of the French Revolutionary Calendar, and is meant to evoke imagery of germination, new growth and fertility. Accordingly, Zola ends the novel on a note of hope, and one which has provided inspiration to socialist and reformist causes of all kinds throughout the years since its first publication:
"Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself."
By the time of his death, the novel had come to be recognized as his undisputed masterpiece. At his funeral crowds of workers gathered, cheering the cortège with shouts of "Germinal! Germinal!". Since then the book has come to symbolize working class causes and to this day retains a special place in French mining-town folklore.
Zola was always very proud of Germinal, and was always keen to defend its accuracy against accusations of hyperbole and exaggeration (from the conservatives) or of slander against the working classes (from the socialists). His research had been typically thorough, especially the parts involving lengthy observational visits to northern French mining towns in 1884, such as witnessing the after-effects of a crippling miners' strike first-hand at Anzin or actually going down a working coal pit at Denain. The mine scenes are especially vivid and haunting as a result.
A sensation upon original publication, it is now by far the best-selling of Zola's novels, both in France and internationally. A number of exceptional modern translations are currently in print and widely available.
Ulysses
Opinions of the novel range across the spectrum. Some readers insist that Ulysses is a superior novel, a tour de force marking a turning point in modern literature. Others insist that it is an inferior novel, an extremely boring work featuring long passages with a chaos of strange words that are a penance to read and a hell to fathom. There can be no gainsaying, though, that Joyce has been highly influential. Through stream of consciousness–and through sometimes manipulation of language–he allows readers to view the complicated, perplexing, and sometimes irrational workings of the human mind. His display of this technique inspired later writers to use it in their own literary works. Unfortunately, because of its mission and its experimental nature, Ulysses tasks the reader like no other novel before it, making him plod through jungles of obscure symbols, perplexing allusions, and boring portraits of ordinary Dublin life. Admirers of Joyce acknowledge that the novel is difficult. Passages like the following (part of a chapter in which Joyce writes in various ideas evolved during the development of the English language) make it so:
A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair.
Since its publication, many scholars, distinguished writers, and average readers have exalted Ulysses as a work of enormous significance and brilliance. Probably just as many scholars, distinguished writers, and average readers have dismissed it as an unremittingly dull, tedious, and tiresome work–a waste of time. The verdict: The novel needs another century or two to ferment, marinate, or whatever literary works do when they go through the "test of time" (as literary tastes change and standards evolve) to reveal itself in all of its fullness to an unbiased judge. This much can be said for certain about the novel: Except in academia, not many people read Ulysses. Those who do decide to have a go at the thick, allusion-laden, language-bending tome frequently put it down after reading a few chapters, never again to pick it up.Sunday, 22 November 2009
Northcliffe and the Press
At the dawn of the 20th century, Britain entered a new era of mass politics. It begun in the 1880s by the extension of the vote to a majority of men- although women could not vote until 1918, and then only if they were aged 30 and above - and continued by educational reforms including the requirement for all children to attend school. The first British daily newspaper to achieve mass circulation was the Daily Mail, which appeared in 1896; deliberately priced at half penny, or half the price of most newspapers, this was owned by the Irish-born Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe). In 1908 Harmsworth also bought The Times, which was seen as the mouthpiece of the British governing class.
By 1914, Northcliffe's newspapers accounted for about half the total daily sales in London alone. Northcliffe's success ushered in the era of the 'press baron' in British politics, including his brother Lord Rothermere, and fellow Canadian Sir Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbrook), owner of the Daily Express. Most adults in Britain had access to either a national or local daily newspaper, and even in small country villages pages from the local newspaper would be pinned up on public notice boards to be read.
Only as the war continued did the government start to extend its grip on propaganda and public opinion.
With no opinion polls or other ways of judging public opinion, politicians paid exaggerated respect to newspapers and their owners, learning to give interviews and to exert influence behind the scenes. David Lloyd George, in particular, as one of the new breed of populist politicians, associated himself closely with these newspaper owners and editors and they played a part in his becoming Prime Minister in December 1916.
Despite many myths after the war, there was in 1914 no fully developed British government organisation or plan for propaganda or the manipulation of public opinion. Just as with the army recruiting drives, so the posters, newspaper proclamations and claims of German 'atrocities' were the product of a complex mix of spontaneous action, national and local politics, and business initiatives. Only as the war continued did the government start to extend its grip on propaganda and public opinion, as on many other aspects of society.
The perceived importance of the press barons in maintaining or manipulating support for the war reached its logical conclusion in 1918 with Northcliffe's appointment to the new post of Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, and Beaverbrook's as head of the equally new Ministry of Information.
By 1914, Northcliffe's newspapers accounted for about half the total daily sales in London alone. Northcliffe's success ushered in the era of the 'press baron' in British politics, including his brother Lord Rothermere, and fellow Canadian Sir Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbrook), owner of the Daily Express. Most adults in Britain had access to either a national or local daily newspaper, and even in small country villages pages from the local newspaper would be pinned up on public notice boards to be read.
Only as the war continued did the government start to extend its grip on propaganda and public opinion.
With no opinion polls or other ways of judging public opinion, politicians paid exaggerated respect to newspapers and their owners, learning to give interviews and to exert influence behind the scenes. David Lloyd George, in particular, as one of the new breed of populist politicians, associated himself closely with these newspaper owners and editors and they played a part in his becoming Prime Minister in December 1916.
Despite many myths after the war, there was in 1914 no fully developed British government organisation or plan for propaganda or the manipulation of public opinion. Just as with the army recruiting drives, so the posters, newspaper proclamations and claims of German 'atrocities' were the product of a complex mix of spontaneous action, national and local politics, and business initiatives. Only as the war continued did the government start to extend its grip on propaganda and public opinion, as on many other aspects of society.
The perceived importance of the press barons in maintaining or manipulating support for the war reached its logical conclusion in 1918 with Northcliffe's appointment to the new post of Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, and Beaverbrook's as head of the equally new Ministry of Information.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Grapes Of Wrath
Released from an Oklahoma state prisonafter serving four years for a manslaughter conviction, Tom Joad makes his way back to his family’s farm in Oklahoma. He meets Jim Casy, a former preacher who has given up his calling out of a belief that all life is holy—even the parts that are typically thought to be sinful—and that sacredness consists simply in endeavoring to be an equal among the people. Jim accompanies Tom to his home, only to find it—and all the surrounding farms—deserted. Muley Graves, an old neighbor, wanders by and tells the men that everyone has been “tractored” off the land. Most families, he says, including his own, have headed to California to look for work. The next morning, Tom and Jim set out for Tom’s Uncle John’s, where Muley assures them they will find the Joad clan. Upon arrival, Tom finds Ma and Pa Joad packing up the family’s few possessions. Having seen handbills advertising fruit-picking jobs in California, they envision the trip to California as their only hope of getting their lives back on track.
The journey to California in a rickety used truck is long and arduous. Grampa Joad, a feisty old man who complains bitterly that he does not want to leave his land, dies on the road shortly after the family’s departure. Dilapidated cars and trucks, loaded down with scrappy possessions, clog Highway it seems the entire country is in flight to the Promised Land of California. The Joads meet Ivy and Sairy Wilson, a couple plagued with car trouble, and invite them to travel with the family. Sairy Wilson is sick and, near the California border, becomes unable to continue the journey.As the Joads near California, they hear ominous rumors of a depleted job market. One migrant tells Pa that people show up for every jobs and that his own children have starved to death. Although the Joads press on, their first days in California prove tragic, as Granma Joad dies. The remaining family members move from one squalid camp to the next, looking in vain for work, struggling to find food, and trying desperately to hold their family together. Noah, the oldest of the Joad children, soon abandons the family, as does Connie, a young dreamer who is married to Tom’s pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon.The Joads meet with much hostility in California. The camps are overcrowded and full of starving migrants, who are often nasty to each other. The locals are fearful and angry at the flood of newcomers, whom they derisively label “Okies.” Work is almost impossible to find or pays such a meager wage that a family’s full day’s work cannot buy a decent meal. Fearing an uprising, the large landowners do everything in their power to keep the migrants poor and dependent. While staying in a ramshackle camp known as a “Hooverville,” Tom and several men get into a heated argument with a deputy sheriff over whether workers should organize into a union. When the argument turns violent, Jim Casy knocks the sheriff unconscious and is arrested. Police officers arrive and announce their intention to burn the Hooverville to the ground.A government-run camp proves much more hospitable to the Joads, and the family soon finds many friends and a bit of work. However, one day, while working at a pipe-laying job, Tom learns that the police are planning to stage a riot in the camp, which will allow them to shut down the facilities. By alerting and organizing the men in the camp, Tom helps to defuse the danger. Still, as pleasant as life in the government camp is, the Joads cannot survive without steady work, and they have to move on. They find employment picking fruit, but soon learn that they are earning a decent wage only because they have been hired to break a workers’ strike. Tom runs into Jim Casy who, after being released from jail, has begun organizing workers; in the process, Casy has made many enemies among the landowners. When the police hunt him down and kill him in Tom’s presence, Tom retaliates and kills a police officer.Tom goes into hiding, while the family moves into a boxcar on a cotton farm. One day, Ruthie, the youngest Joad daughter, reveals to a girl in the camp that her brother has killed two men and is hiding nearby. Fearing for his safety, Ma Joad finds Tom and sends him away. Tom heads off to fulfill Jim’s task of organizing the migrant workers. The end of the cotton season means the end of work, and word sweeps across the land that there are no jobs to be had for three months. Rains set in and flood the land. Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn child, and Ma, desperate to get her family to safety from the floods, leads them to a dry barn not far away. Here, they find a young boy kneeling over his father, who is slowly starving to death. He has not eaten for days, giving whatever food he had to his son. Realizing that Rose of Sharon is now producing milk, Ma sends the others outside, so that her daughter can nurse the dying man.
The journey to California in a rickety used truck is long and arduous. Grampa Joad, a feisty old man who complains bitterly that he does not want to leave his land, dies on the road shortly after the family’s departure. Dilapidated cars and trucks, loaded down with scrappy possessions, clog Highway it seems the entire country is in flight to the Promised Land of California. The Joads meet Ivy and Sairy Wilson, a couple plagued with car trouble, and invite them to travel with the family. Sairy Wilson is sick and, near the California border, becomes unable to continue the journey.As the Joads near California, they hear ominous rumors of a depleted job market. One migrant tells Pa that people show up for every jobs and that his own children have starved to death. Although the Joads press on, their first days in California prove tragic, as Granma Joad dies. The remaining family members move from one squalid camp to the next, looking in vain for work, struggling to find food, and trying desperately to hold their family together. Noah, the oldest of the Joad children, soon abandons the family, as does Connie, a young dreamer who is married to Tom’s pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon.The Joads meet with much hostility in California. The camps are overcrowded and full of starving migrants, who are often nasty to each other. The locals are fearful and angry at the flood of newcomers, whom they derisively label “Okies.” Work is almost impossible to find or pays such a meager wage that a family’s full day’s work cannot buy a decent meal. Fearing an uprising, the large landowners do everything in their power to keep the migrants poor and dependent. While staying in a ramshackle camp known as a “Hooverville,” Tom and several men get into a heated argument with a deputy sheriff over whether workers should organize into a union. When the argument turns violent, Jim Casy knocks the sheriff unconscious and is arrested. Police officers arrive and announce their intention to burn the Hooverville to the ground.A government-run camp proves much more hospitable to the Joads, and the family soon finds many friends and a bit of work. However, one day, while working at a pipe-laying job, Tom learns that the police are planning to stage a riot in the camp, which will allow them to shut down the facilities. By alerting and organizing the men in the camp, Tom helps to defuse the danger. Still, as pleasant as life in the government camp is, the Joads cannot survive without steady work, and they have to move on. They find employment picking fruit, but soon learn that they are earning a decent wage only because they have been hired to break a workers’ strike. Tom runs into Jim Casy who, after being released from jail, has begun organizing workers; in the process, Casy has made many enemies among the landowners. When the police hunt him down and kill him in Tom’s presence, Tom retaliates and kills a police officer.Tom goes into hiding, while the family moves into a boxcar on a cotton farm. One day, Ruthie, the youngest Joad daughter, reveals to a girl in the camp that her brother has killed two men and is hiding nearby. Fearing for his safety, Ma Joad finds Tom and sends him away. Tom heads off to fulfill Jim’s task of organizing the migrant workers. The end of the cotton season means the end of work, and word sweeps across the land that there are no jobs to be had for three months. Rains set in and flood the land. Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn child, and Ma, desperate to get her family to safety from the floods, leads them to a dry barn not far away. Here, they find a young boy kneeling over his father, who is slowly starving to death. He has not eaten for days, giving whatever food he had to his son. Realizing that Rose of Sharon is now producing milk, Ma sends the others outside, so that her daughter can nurse the dying man.
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