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Grapes of Wrath Ch.5-8 Theme Analysis

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Grapes of Wrath Ch.5-8 Theme Analysis
Oscar Medina
AP Lit Per.1
Mr. Royal
February 9, 2012
Grapes of Wrath Ch. 5-8 Analysis
Ch.5
Theme: A theme found in this chapter is “The Monster,” or to be more exact, human control. The Monster is the bank, as it takes the money away from all the people. The bank has a power over the people, as they are desperate just to clear their debt fro m the bank. It is as though it is a monster, forcing the people to do whatever is possible, from stealing to scavenging, just to help with the debt. Some are forced to leave their lands and travel to California, where it is said to have jobs, so the people have to raise money for the trip. Humans lose control of their own lives, and have to do unorthodox things to help their lives. They are controlled by the bank, “The Monster” and have slim chance for any other options.

Analysis: From the beginning of the chapter a simile can be seen, as the tractors as seem moving “like insects.” It continues with a metaphor of how “they crawled over the ground.” It works well in describing how the tractors were in the huge land, and from far away how they looked like insects. The diction is from a farmland standpoint, having “diesel tractors,” “across the country,” and describing many of the objects with metaphors that exaggerate the details of the “tractors.” Also how they describe the drivers, how they did not seem human. The diction changes, as they describe the driver as a monster, a masked man, a robot. It is interesting because these two chapters are a huge description of the “monster” which is the tractors that run across the land, destroying anything in their path. It talked about how the tractors did not care about the land, and just controlled and destroyed everything, which compares to the bank, which did not care but just took the land from all the people, destroying all life on the country land. (47-48)

Conflict: The conflict that is seen here is the people being pushed out from the land. The banks are used for the debts

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