This passage, written in Chapter 25, describes a change in environment of California, from vivid, bright, and lively to dark. However, it also includes the narrator’s criticism on the larger company landowners’ extreme greed, selfishness, and their excess desire to have what they do not necessarily need to obtain or things that the tenant or normal farmers could never own. The dark and ominous atmosphere was creeping over the lands of California, along with the farmers’ growing anger towards those greedy owners. Steinbeck writes this passage in order to explicitly criticize the behaviors of the landowners, and to show the farmers’ growing anger that was reaching towards the peak. The narrator criticizes about the landowners’ actions, especially
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For example, the narrator uses imagery, describing how “the carloads of oranges dumped on the ground...and men with hoses squirt kerosene...and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.” The oranges were grown by farmers of the landowners, but soon as they were all picked, the farmers lost their job again as if the oranges, represented as the farmers, were ruined by kerosene. Additionally, the narrator criticized that nature was getting destroyed by rotten fruits that came from the greedy landowners, like the sprayed “golden mountains.” The farmers were angry and melancholy that the places where they used to live were decaying by those hands of landowners. Steinbeck described their growing anger as if “in the eyes of the hungry, there is a growing wrath.” Hungry, depressed, and desperate, the farmers were full of resentment towards the landowners for not understanding their situations and not providing and sharing their needs. The farmers have been tolerating the landowners’ actions and “the souls of the people of the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.” Knowing the fact the phrase “the grapes of wrath” refers to the growing and continuing anger, the narrator wanted for landowners to be aware of the farmers’ anger that will explode
For example, the narrator uses imagery, describing how “the carloads of oranges dumped on the ground...and men with hoses squirt kerosene...and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.” The oranges were grown by farmers of the landowners, but soon as they were all picked, the farmers lost their job again as if the oranges, represented as the farmers, were ruined by kerosene. Additionally, the narrator criticized that nature was getting destroyed by rotten fruits that came from the greedy landowners, like the sprayed “golden mountains.” The farmers were angry and melancholy that the places where they used to live were decaying by those hands of landowners. Steinbeck described their growing anger as if “in the eyes of the hungry, there is a growing wrath.” Hungry, depressed, and desperate, the farmers were full of resentment towards the landowners for not understanding their situations and not providing and sharing their needs. The farmers have been tolerating the landowners’ actions and “the souls of the people of the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.” Knowing the fact the phrase “the grapes of wrath” refers to the growing and continuing anger, the narrator wanted for landowners to be aware of the farmers’ anger that will explode