John Steinbeck's Intercalary Chapters

As a reader, I enjoy Steinbeck’s use of the intercalary chapter approach. By using the intercalary chapters, Steinbeck is able to create a sense of the time frame and the struggles that people went through. He does this without using the Joad family, which creates the sense that the problems of the era were spanning across the country and not just between a few individual families.
Steinbeck likes to give the “whole side of the story” and not just the perspective of the poor migrant families. When he speaks through the Joad family he makes the reader pity those who were kicked off their land and forced to find new means of survival in California. By the same token, I found myself feeling bad for people like the Joads which made me angry at the wealthy people and those that made the Joad’s life ever harder, especially natives who called them “Okies”. Then Steinbeck throws in the intercalary chapters that shed light on how other people felt during that same time period. In chapter 19 Steinbeck writes, “And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more” (Steinbeck 318). …show more content…
At times they could be misconstrued with parts of the storyline and the Joad’s travels. They also required a lot of analysis to really understand what was meant in the chapter. In chapter three Steinbeck writes about a turtle trying to cross the road. After finishing the chapter I was confused about what I just read and had to go back to analyze the turtle. This can get a little annoying after every other chapter but it’s very satisfying when you finally realize what Steinbeck meant. After finishing the book, I think it would be interesting to reread some of the intercalary chapters to pick up on any messages that I might have missed while reading the book the first