Technology In The Grapes Of Wrath Essay

Technology and Material Culture in The Grapes of Wrath There are two irrevocable aspects to modern life from which we cannot separate: the use of technology, which can be good, bad, or somewhere between simultaneously, and the goods, items, objects, and products that we attach emotional value to, consume, and hoard. We are constantly finding new methods and innovations to speed up the processes of creating objects to consume, and then building our lives, measuring our very happiness up to what we can call our own. Our lives are undeniably intertwined with the technologies developed, as well as the possessions which we claim and obtain. In The Grapes of Wrath, we are given multiple opportunities to examine the ways in which people deal with technology and material …show more content…
Both are vehicular in nature, though one is used primarily in the fields and the other dominates the highway. They are both pieces of machinery that are operated by a single person, run on engines and fuel, and, to the modern person, can easily be fixtures or facets of our daily lives, which we rarely give second thought to. In the novel, they are portrayed in various lights, though I would suggest that the connotations associated with the tractor are significantly darker and more pessimistic in nature, while the car is viewed in a more positive and helpful light. The tractor and the car, throughout Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, manifest in scenes by themselves, as well as with human counterparts. In most excerpts with organic actors, the actor astride the tractor takes on the cold, lifeless characteristics attributed to the machine, as if it separates the person from the land and dehumanizes them, but the actor inside the car, as seen in the relationship between Al and his vehicles, becomes almost symbiotic and diagnostic in