The Grapes of Wrath
Unit Plan
PRE-READING EXERCISES:
Getting Ready to Read
~The assignment sequence you're beginning asks you to look at The Grapes of Wrath and complete several types of assignments.
1. What two major events took place in America in the early 1930’s? (one is economic, one is a natural disaster)
2. Going in order from east to west, name the states that route 66 travels through.
3. On the internet find images from Dorothea Lange. What emotions does she capture in these images? What can you see in her subjects’ faces?
4. Who is the author? When & where did he live? Why is he important to us? What awards did this book win? What statement was he making with this book?
Quick-write
Before you begin reading, take a few minutes and write about the following:
1. What is the importance of family?
2. What do you think of when you hear the term “okie”?
3. What comes to mind when you think of a ‘migrant farmer’?
4. What is more important to you—standing up for your beliefs/ morals, or protecting your family?
Surveying the Text & Making Predictions:
Look at the title The Grapes of Wrath and think about the following questions:
1. Look at page xi, what is Steinbeck’s contrapuntal structure. Describe what he did.
2. This book was originally published in what year?
3. Read over the Steinbeck biography. List five things you learn about Steinbeck.
READING THE TEXT:
I. Reading Strategies:
· Looking Closely at Language
· Rereading the Text
· Analyzing Stylistic Choices
II. Introducing Key Vocabulary
For each chapter, you have a list of words and phrases that you need to define. Please remember to consider the way the word is used in the text.
Chapter 1 & 2:
Vocabulary- dissipated, bayonet, gullies, threshed, emulsion, bemused, perplexity, hasp, cowl, insinuation, judiciously, satire
Understanding the Text-
1. When was the last rain?
2. What began to settle on everything?
3. What does it mean “…this time the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel if this time the men would break”?
4. What would happen if the men “broke”? How would their faces have looked?
5. To what can you compare the dust storms?
6. Why did the driver give Tom a ride even though it was against company rules?
7. Describe Tom Joad.
8. Why does the trucker make a point of telling Tom that he would “be su’prised how much a guy can remember”?
9. Where has Tom been? For how long? For what reason?
Chapter 3 & 4:
Vocabulary- dispersed, anlage, embankment, molting, mussed, broodingly
Understanding the Text-
1. What does the turtle represent? What do you think the turtle stands for?
2. Why is it important that the turtle “planted” some seeds accidentally?
3. In what ways is the turtle admirable?
4. What does Tom pick up to bring to the kids?
5. Describe Casy’s appearance.
6. Why did Casy stop preaching?
7. What are Casy’s ideas about sin and virtue? Do you agree?
8. How did Tom end up in jail?
9. What was good about prison?
10. How did Pa Joad “steal” their house?
11. What kind of person do you think Uncle John is?
Chapter 5:
Vocabulary- augers, remnants, perplexed, phalli
Understanding the Text-
1. The owner men behaved in different ways. What were they?
2. Why was the soil so poor?
3. What “point” did the owner men finally come to?
4. Where did the owner men suggest the farmers go?
5. What is meant by “sun-beaten dooryard” and “corn-headed children”? What images do you get from these phrases?
6. In what ways did the tenant farmers “own” the land?
7. What does Joe Davis’ boy plan to do as an accident? Why?
Chapter 6 & 7:
Vocabulary- cultivated, lean-to, truculently, gulch, jalopy
Understanding the Text-
1. Did the neighbors steal from Albert Rance?
2. What information does Muley Graves give Tom and Casy?
3. What does Muley’s monologue make Casy realize?
4. What is Tom afraid has happened to his family?
5. What can you tell about Granpa from Tom’s comments? Give examples.
6. Why is Tom not supposed to leave the state?
7. How do you know that the Joads are uneducated?
8. To what does Muley compare himself?
9. What is the connection between chapters 5 and 6?
10. Find some examples of dishonest tactics used to sell cars to the tenant farmers.
Chapter 8:
Vocabulary- insubstantial, clods, meerschaum, lithely, incredulously, animosity, citadel, imperturbability, arbiter, timidity, apprehension, lecherously, retorted, supplication, conjecture, intricacies, nuisance, veneration, rakish, slavishness
Understanding the Text-
1. What conclusion do Tom and Casy reach about Muley?
2. What happened to Uncle John that causes him so much guilt?
3. How does Uncle John try to make up for his “sin”?
4. List phrases that describe Ma. How important is she to the family?
5. Why did Ma almost lose control and then regain it when she saw Tommy? What would have happened if she had cried?
6. Are Granma and Granpa fond of one another?
7. How is Noah “different”?
8. What secret does Pa have about Noah?
9. Who is Rosasharn? What is her situation?
10. Why did Al admire Tom so much? How did it show?
Chapter 9 & 10:
Vocabulary- harrow, forelocks, implements, refuse, scrounged, hoyden, fatuously, stereopticon, eminent, enthroned, revulsion
Understanding the Text-
1. What were the junk men buying in addition to the farmer’s possessions?
2. Why would they ‘pile up the goods in the yard and set fire to them’?
3. Does Ma have any doubts about California?
4. What advice does Tom give Ma?
5. Who are Ruthie and Winfield?
6. How much money did the Joads get for the goods they sold? Why didn’t they get more?
7. How much money do the Joads have altogether? Is this going to be enough?
8. What made Al feel so important and responsible?
9. What treasures did Ma bring?
10. Ma’s burning of the old letters and clippings are a symbol of what?
11. What problem does Granpa present the family with the morning they are to leave? How do they solve it?
12. What is Casy’s purpose in going west?
Chapter 11 & 12:
Vocabulary- ~~
Understanding the Text-
1. What is the difference between a tractor and a horse?
2. How is a man who merely cultivates someone else’s land with a tractor different from one who lives on it and uses a plow and a horse?
3. Who comes to empty houses?
4. What kinds of car problems did the people going west have?
5. What warnings do the people at service stations give the travelers?
6. To what does Steinbeck compare the cars on Highway 66?
7. Why was it so easy for service stations to take advantage of the people going west?
8. Why do the travelers keep going on the road to California in spite of the rumors of no work?
Chapter 13 & 14:
Vocabulary- stern, blundered, penetrating, serene, beholden, pauper, mattock, dwindling, zygote
Understanding the Text-
1. What is Ma’s main concern about going to California?
2. How do Rose of Sharon and Connie usually act when they are together?
3. Why did Tom get angry with the fat man at the service station?
4. What things made Tom realize that the fat man is really one of them?
5. With the exception of Rose of Sharon’s concern for her baby, the family didn’t have much reaction to the dog being run over. Why?
6. How did the Joads meet the Wilsons?
7. Why does the government get involved when people die?
8. What one quality, according to Steinbeck, distinguishes man from other animals?
9. What did Casy mean when he said that Granpa was dying when he left the farm? Did he know he was sick?
10. Why was it important to the Joads to help the Wilsons with their car?
11. What did Steinbeck mean by “He had become the soul of the car”?
12. What makes the people in the Western states nervous?
13. Why does Steinbeck repeat phrases? What effect does it have for the reader?
Chapter 15 & 16:
Vocabulary- corrugated
Understanding the Text-
1. Why does Mae hate the rich people?
2. How does the behavior of the man with the two little boys compare to the way
the Westerners think the migrants act?
3. How are Mae, Al and the truck drivers all sympathetic toward those who have less than they do?
4. What do Rose of Sharon and Connie plan to do?
5. Why does Ma react so violently to Tom’s idea of the others going ahead while the car is fixed?
6. What did Pa lose by giving in to Ma?
7. Why doesn’t Tom want to tell Al about jail?
8. Describe the man at the junkyard?
9. When Al and Tom went to town for the car part, how did Tom behave more responsibly than Al?
10. Were Tom’s remarks to the junkyard man were unkind?
11. What is Al worried about?
12. Why did Al try to hit the cat on the road? Would Tom have done it?
13. Explain the issue with the handbills advertizing work in California.
Chapter 17 & 18:
Vocabulary- braggart, humble, transcend, ostracism, integrated, acquaintanceship, withers, arrogant, migrant, pinnacles, plateaus, encampment, vehemence, prosperous, exhortation, decorous
Understanding the Text-
1. Why did the people going West huddle together at night?
2. What ‘code’ developed in the camps? What were the punishments for breaking it?
3. What did the men talk about?
4. What does “Okie” mean?
5. What did Noah decide to do in Needles, CA?
6. Why did the people need to “build worlds” at night?
7. What does Casy say about people who “collect things like prairie dogs”?
8. How did Sairy Wilson describe herself?
9. Why does having dirty clothes and not even washing the potatoes seem so terrible to Ma?
10. What was good about the arrival in California? What was bad?
Chapter 19:
Vocabulary- squatters, scythe, dispossessed, nebulous, fallow
Understanding the Text-
1. How did Americans come to own land in California?
2. What hunger did the new owner’s children lack?
3. How did farming become industry?
4. What affect does Steinbeck create by repeating …”And in Kansas and Arkansas, in Oklahoma, and Texas and New Mexico, the trackers moved in and pushed the tenants out”?
Chapter 20:
Vocabulary- slovenly, belligerently, vagrant
Understanding the Text-
1. What bothered Ma most about Granma’s death?
2. Why did the Okies find so much hatred when they came to California?
3. Describe the Hooverville.
4. What is a blacklist?
5. How did Rose of Sharon scare Connie?
6. What sad event involved the camp’s children?
7. Floyd fills Tom in on the methods used by the labor contractors to get men to work cheaply? Explain.
8. What did Floyd ask of the labor contractor? Were his demands fair?
9. Why does Casy welcome the chance to take the blame for Tom?
10. Why did Uncle John find it necessary to go get drunk?
11. What do you think happened to Connie?
12. How do you think Tom’s attitude toward police developed? How might it get him into trouble?
Chapter 21 & 22:
Vocabulary- ravenous, rachitic, ferment, disconsolately
Understanding the Text-
1. How did the big companies eventually hurt the small farmers in California?
2. How do the camp residents pay to stay at the government camp if they have no money?
3. What made Mr. Thomas reduce the pay to 25 cents an hour? Did he have a choice?
4. What was Hine’s definition of a “red”?
5. What embarrassing thing happened to Ma?
6. Why did the frayed seams of Jim Rawley’s coat reassure Ma?
7. How were the people in the government camps different from those in the Hoovervilles? How were they the same?
8. What effect has the Joad adventure had on Ruthie and Winfield? What needs do they have that aren’t being met?
9. Why were the migrants willing to work for so little? What would have happened if they all refused?
10. How are Jim Rawley and Casy alike?
Chapter 23 & 24:
Vocabulary- requisitioned, vagrancy, contemptuous, condemned, reverent
Understanding the Text-
1. The migrant people had another kind of hunger. What was it? How did they satisfy it?
2. What do the local people plan to do to get rid of the migrants?
3. Why do you think Rose of Sharon was so reluctant to go to the dance?
4. What is school like for the few migrant children who attend?
5. What does “on the faces of the watchers the smiles were of old times” mean? (pg. 467)
6. How did the troublemakers justify their actions?
7. In what ways do the Okies contribute to the economy?
Chapter 25 & 26:
Vocabulary- quarantine, graft, putrescence, denunciation, pellagra
Understanding the Text-
1. To what does Steinbeck compare the California valleys in the spring?
2. Why did the fruit described in Chapter 25 have to rot?
3. What is the saddest thing about the rotting and vegetables and the slaughtered pigs?
4. Why did they make such bad wine from the grapes?
5. What did Ma insist the men do after a few weeks at the government camp? How did Pa react?
6. Why did Ma want to make Pa angry?
7. Why did Ma choose this particular time to pierce Rose of Sharon’s ears?
8. What scares Tom about the Hoovervilles?
9. What did Willie, Jule, and Tom talk about just before the Joads left the government camp?
10. What announcement did Al make on the way to Bakersfield?
11. What can you tell about the storekeeper’s character from his actions: loaning Ma a dime for the sugar, cuddling his cat. Is he “one of the people” or one of the enemy?
12. Who was the organizer of the strike outside Hooper’s Ranch? What happened to him? What did Tom do?