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American Literature: End of the Line 8314 Views


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00:01

No end of the line No Don't step on me

00:24

Not again Oh you're just a student Thank the lord

00:28

I thought you were a winemaker ready to stop me

00:31

I'm known as the wrathful grape don't know why i'm

00:34

pretty chill but i hate it when people call me

00:37

angry Whoops Sorry Maybe they call me that because i'm

00:41

an expert on John steinbeck's 19:39 novel The grapes of

00:45

wrath Yeah yeah Yuck it up Today i'll be focusing

00:48

on the ending of the grapes of wrath Fair warning

00:51

This thing is dense maybe even denser than a triple

00:54

layer brownie sundae Yeah so buckle in shmoop rooney's Because

00:58

it's time to finish this journey once and for all

01:01

Before we can get into things let's quickly refresh ourselves

01:04

on the ending If you remember correctly tom's on the

01:07

run from the law after killing the policeman that murdered

01:10

jim casey This forces the joad family to leave the

01:13

relative comfort of the peach farm and seek out work

01:16

elsewhere They hide tom in a cave for a while

01:19

giving him food when they can Nice case the local

01:22

soon catch wind of this fugitive situation however forcing the

01:25

jobs to say goodbye to tom the family ends up

01:28

picking cotton at a plantation and living in an old

01:30

abandoned boxcar It's Pretty nice ous faras old abandoned box

01:34

cars go now Remember rose of sharon is pregnant and

01:38

her husband connie bailed out A few towns backs well

01:41

rose starts giving birth at the same time that a

01:44

huge rainstorm lets loose over the boxcar Sadly rose's baby

01:49

is stillborn it's devastating news Meanwhile the water keeps rising

01:53

Joe's try a variety of tricks to keep the water

01:56

from flooding their box car but they ultimately prove on

01:59

success Eventually the flooding gets so bad that jobs are

02:02

forced to leave their makeshift home Yeah it's hard to

02:05

say goodbye So off they go in search of some

02:07

place dry They come across a barn which is perfect

02:10

for their purposes Inside they find a boy and his

02:12

father The father is in rough shape because he's been

02:15

given all of his food to his son instead of

02:17

eating it himself That's When something unexpected happened rose asks

02:22

everyone to leave the bar and lets the man drink

02:24

her breast milk which is being produced because of the

02:27

pregnancy The scene has left More or less open ended

02:30

We don't know what happens to the man or the

02:32

joad family or poor young tom This is what we

02:35

in the biz call an ambiguous ending folks So what

02:39

can we learn from this open ended final scene First

02:41

remember that the grapes of wrath is a realist novel

02:44

which means that it's supposed to depict life as it

02:46

is rather than as we'd like it to be After

02:49

all ria life rarely works out like it does in

02:51

the movies In fact it never does Sometimes things go

02:55

well sometimes they go bad but never do they just

02:57

up and stop in that way it's fitting that the

03:00

grapes of wrath doesn't end with some perfect resolution because

03:03

that's what life's like now that that's out of the

03:06

way let's start analyzing first the elephant in the room

03:09

The novel ends with rose breast feeding an adult man

03:12

It's certainly a striking visual and not one we're going

03:15

to depict here for What does it mean Well for

03:17

rose there's Probably something comforting about it despite the weirdness

03:21

of the situation After all she just lost her child

03:24

And that child is the reason she's able to breastfeed

03:27

But now despite the trudge guests and because of it

03:30

she has the opportunity to save a life it's a

03:33

powerful gesture one that mirror's other sacrifices made by characters

03:37

in the novel like when the jobs help out the

03:39

wilsons or when casey helps organize striking workers or when

03:42

tom let's rose have his last piece of halloween candy

03:45

Or did we imagine that one Either way rose of

03:49

sharon shows us the ultimate example of sacrifice by feeding

03:52

the starving man at the end of the novel Even

03:54

if the man ends up kicking the bucket It's still

03:57

mighty meaningful that rose of sharon tried to help him

04:00

To better understand this it might be useful to take

04:02

a look at the symbols we've encountered along the way

04:05

The most ever present symbol and the grapes of wrath

04:07

is the road roads It turns out our heavy symbolic

04:11

implications in fiction whether you're talking about on the road

04:14

or the road In this case our road de jour

04:17

is route sixty six which cut straight across the united

04:21

states Route sixty six is a notable symbol in american

04:24

society on its own it's inspired everything from songs to

04:28

movies in the grapes of wrath route sixty six is

04:30

a lifeline for the jobs and the other families like

04:33

them escaping the dust bowl Route sixty six is even

04:36

described as the mother road the road of flight it's

04:39

also significant that route sixty six never really intersects with

04:42

other major roads It goes in two directions on lee

04:45

on route sixty six you can either keep moving forward

04:48

in search of opportunity or you could turn around and

04:50

head back to the place you've always known which doesn't

04:53

happen to be an option for the jobs The novel

04:55

also features more insects than you could shake a fly

04:58

swatter at In our lesson on the desk paul we

05:00

talked about how it caused a horde of insects to

05:02

bear down on the midwest These buggers literally block the

05:06

sun from shining theories which makes us think about the

05:09

book of exodus in the bible in which god via

05:12

moses unload a load of course is upon egypt one

05:15

of which is a plague of locusts thiss suggests that

05:18

the dust bowl was so terrifying that it felt like

05:21

a curse from god on the other hand one of

05:24

the early chapters features tom crushing the hard skull like

05:27

head of a grass hopper So maybe these insect lloyd's

05:30

aren't so tough after all Well now that you have

05:33

a diagnosable case of the heebie jeebies it's time to

05:35

turn to a much less creepy symbol music These were

05:38

the days before spotify and itunes If you wanted music

05:41

there weren't many places to get it You need a

05:43

banjo or harmonica or a car huh Weird as it

05:47

sounds the credit used car that jodi's drive makes all

05:51

sorts of crazy noises So many noises in fact that

05:54

it starts to sound like music Check out this bit

05:57

for example Deep stuff on another weird note Tom joad

06:08

here's More music in prison than he does anywhere else

06:12

It's hard to pinpoint what exactly Steinbeck's trying to get

06:15

across with all this music imagery But all we know

06:18

is that it's totally ominous Next on the list are

06:21

animals of many shapes and sizes We have the poor

06:24

hapless turtle who tom rescues as if trying to cross

06:27

the road That moment makes us think of the jobs

06:30

own determination in the face of adversity There's a similar

06:33

thing going down with the jobs former house who in

06:36

the time since the family was forced out of the

06:38

home has become legit Barrel me out like they're family

06:42

feline The jobs have been forced out of the comfort

06:45

of civilization and forced to take a walk on the

06:48

wild side Then of course there's the family dog The

06:52

poor guy is hit by a car early on in

06:54

the trip while the family is pumping gas This is

06:57

a sad hint of the struggles still to come for

06:59

the job And now it's color time y'all three colors

07:03

to be specific red gray and yellow we watched the

07:08

yellowing dusty Afternoon light fall across the oklahoma countryside Elsewhere

07:13

the book describes the country as both red and gray

07:16

which makes us think of the blood sweat and tears

07:18

that have been poured into okey country by local farmers

07:22

Speaking up farming is a big symbol in and of

07:25

itself it's Pretty miraculous When you stop and think about

07:27

it you stick a little pebble in the ground and

07:30

then a couple of months later you got like an

07:31

avocado or something Well the grapes of wrath takes place

07:35

during the transition between the traditional old school methods of

07:38

farming and the modern machine driven marketplace This is obviously

07:42

horrendous for the farmers whose livelihoods are being destroyed by

07:46

buckets of brainless bolts Next up blood Don't worry no

07:50

vampires here Some okie farmers believe that rich landowners who

07:54

plant cotton in the state are second the blood out

07:56

of the land that is red blood Of course call

07:59

back This makes blood represent vitality and life to things

08:03

that are in short supply round these parts Of course

08:05

there's also plenty of literal blood in the novel After

08:08

all the novel's title is taken from the battle hymn

08:11

of the republic where it's used as a direct reference

08:13

to blood and asked line blood they look the same

08:16

Still it doesn't take a phd to deduce that this

08:18

sort of blood represents death pain and all that awful

08:21

nastiness Last and certainly not least is the west broad

08:26

topic home in american society The west has always represented

08:29

freedom and new opportunities There's lewis and clark the gold

08:33

rush and it lets throw to park in there for

08:35

good measure He's a quality california anyway grapes complicates this

08:39

by showing us the misery and desperation that phil california's

08:42

fertile hills So check out this quote on ly the

08:46

unbalanced sky showed the approach of dog no horizon to

08:49

the west and aligned to the east This both hints

08:52

at the sense of freedom and unknown associate it with

08:55

the west and gives us a sense that this feeling

08:57

might be uneasy on some level And now friends were

09:00

left with the biggest question of all What in the

09:03

name of steinbeck does this all mean Well the symbols

09:06

we've studied helped emphasize many of the themes found in

09:08

the novels ending After all many of those symbols reflect

09:11

the hardships And adversities faced by the jobs So does

09:14

the ending which is a double edged sword in that

09:16

regard On one hand it's just another hardship The joes

09:19

are once again forced from a place of comfort and

09:21

into the wild unknown but it's also uplifting because despite

09:25

the fact that rosa sharon just lost her child she's

09:28

choosing to take that tragedy which in this case is

09:30

represented by a breast milk strangers have been sound and

09:33

use it to save someone else who's experiencing hardship as

09:36

well Ultimately this bittersweet feeling defines the ending of the

09:40

grapes of wrath it's like a sour grape there is

09:42

pain and suffering Yeah but amid that pain and suffering

09:46

is humanity and has a great i can say that

09:49

you humans could be a lot better people than you

09:51

think especially when the going gets tough But like all

09:53

great travelogues the grapes of wrath is about the journey

09:56

not the destination After all there is no destination The

10:00

jobs never reached their promised land at least not yet

10:03

And me Well i'm pretty content where i'm at so

10:06

long as no one makers move into the neighborhood i

10:09

think i'll be a okay but let me tell you

10:12

something But you ever try to smush me my friends

10:15

and my family Then we will find out first hand 00:10:18.842 --> [endTime] why they call me the great

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