In The Beast we learned the story of various migrant women who are now working in bars and brothels in Southern Mexico. They work as bartenders, exotic dancers and prostitutes. They even entice younger women to join in what they call "the Trade."
What do their stories tell us about the role of gender and race in migration? About consent, coercion and exploitation? About human trafficking? About the society that tolerates this "Trade"?
In The Beast we encounter a society dominated by the Zetas, a powerful organized crime synidcate. According to an uncover agent, "[W]however wants a job, any kind of job has to work for the Zetas. They control everything, every institution"(117).
How does this level of organized crime impact the migrant's experience? How does it affect society? Howis similar or different from the corruption in police and business in the Grapes of Wrath?
In Grapes of Wrath we saw tractors destroy homes and fields and gerry-rigged trucks as delivery to a promised land. Now in The Beast we have trains that can both quickly transport migrants but also can kill and maim as well as trap them to be robbed or kidnapped.
What is the Beast telling us about technology and machines? Good, bad or a little of both?
The novel ends with an epic flood, almost Biblical in proportion, that forces Ma and Pa -- with Rose of Sharon, Ruthie and Winfield in tow -- to find higher ground. In part they are spurred on to aid Rose of Sharon's health as she has just lost her baby and is still feeling unwell, both physically and emotionally. They seek shelter in a barn, only to encounter a boy and his father, who is dying of hunger and can no longer digest solid food. The novel ends when Rose of Sharon
loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. "You got to," she said. "there." Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across hte barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously (455).
What is the significance of this gesture and the image this scene is describing?
Tom Joad, the moral center of the The Grapes of Wrath, abruptly exits the novel in chapter 28. In order to escape possible arrest and to save his family from the effects of his problems, he decides (with the approval of Ma) to do the unthinkable: leave the family. In his conversation with Ma he gives his famous speech which can be interpreted as a moment of spiritual insight, a gesture of solidarity or a call to action. He says (in part), "I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Where they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there."(419). While not the end of the novel, it is the ending of arguably the most important story arc.
What is the significance of Tom's speech and the ending of his story as he departs from the Joad family in chapter 28?
During the Joad's odyssey to find a new life in California, many of their friends and family members are lost along the way. Some characters like Muley Graves don't even begin the journey. Others like Grandpa and Grandma die on the way. Some like the Wilsons are too sick to continue. Still others like Noah and Connie drift away from the family to parts unknown. Others like Casy are arrested. Like a horror movie, one by one the family members disappear. By the end of journey only a remnant of the family and original party remain.
What does the disappearance of so many characters tell us about a theme in the novel? Or about the individual characters? Why do so many folks dissapear, die, surrender and fail in this novel?
Grapes of Wrath begins when Tom Joad, imprisoned for homicide, returns home on parole. Near the end of the novel, in a shocking scene of violence, Jim Casy, the preacher who no long preaches -- now a union organizer -- is brutally murdered by the police and Tom attacks the police with their own weapon, probably killing one of them. Yet, despite the fact the film is bracketed with violence, there are other moments of peaceful resistance as when Huston and Tom thwart an attempted riot and do not seek vengeance on the infiltrators.
Is the novel taking a stand on violence? Under what conditions does it flourish? Is it ever justified? What about things like self-defense, vengeance or political action? Is violence inevitable -- or is there a better way?
The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of Joad family's search for a new life in California after being evicted from their farm in Oklahoma. The family includes three generations (four if you include Rose of Sharon's unborn child) as well as seven siblings. In addtion, the novel also includes other characters connected to the family such as Jim Casy and Muley Graves. Furthermore, there are a whole host of characters that we meet on their journey, such as Ivy and Sairy Wilson, and some who we don't even know their names such as the truckdriver that Tom hitches a ride with, the one-eyed man who sells Al and Tom car parts or the ragged man they meet at a campsite who is going back to Oklahoma to starve.
Do some of these characters represent a main theme or idea? Do they represent "roads not taken" by the main characters or contrasts with the Joad family? Do they all (or most) have something in common? Do they fit into categories or types? Why this sprawling cast of characters?
Religion plays an outsized role in the lives of the Joads and their fellow migrants. Yet, the closest thing to a preacher in the story, Jim Casy, is a preacher who has renounced his vocation and who voices controversial views that depart from orthodox Christainity. Early in the novel he proclaims, "The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff that people do"(23) He later adds, "[M]aybe that's the Holy Sperit -- the human sperit--the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of"(24). Later when he is pressed to give a eulogy over the grave of Grampa he says, "This here ol'man jus' lived a life an 'jus died out it . . . He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now he's dead, an' that don't matter"(144). He goes on to quote a Blake poem that states that "all that lives is holy"(144).
What is the significance of Casy, the preacher who no longer preaches? What is it telling us about religion in a world that is seemingly suffering from a catastrophic plague almost Biblical in proprtion? What is the novel's take on religion and spirituality?
Animal imagery abounds in The Grapes of Wrath. An early chapter describes a turtle's journey to cross a road only to be hit by a truck (Chapter 3). Muley Graves describes himself as an animal when he claims, "I was mean like a wolf. Now I'm mean like a weasel" (57). In addition the family dog meets an untimely end on the first stop on their journey (130) .
Choose at least one such image from the chapters we have read. What is the symbolic value of the image? What is it telling us about themes, characters or ideas in this novel? What is the point of all this animal imagery?
