Ch. 19
Directions: Don’t answer every question. Instead, respond in narrative format to questions that strike an interest for you. Your response should be typed, double-spaced 1-2 pages (over one page, less than three pages).
How does Steinbeck describe the appropriation of California by Americans? What was the justification of that appropriation? How was it pursued? How was property defined, distributed, protected, and ensured? How did the character of the owners change over time? What became important instead of land? How did the farmers become 'shopkeepers' of sorts? How is America said to have followed in the steps of Rome? How is the industrialization of farming related to the re-introduction of slavery (of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos)? What happens to the size of farms and the numbers of owners? How do the owners pay the laborers? How do company stores function?
Consider the significance of the following passage from Marx. How does it illuminate the peculiar problems encountered by the Joads in a land as rich as California? How does it address the inadequacies of a labor theory of value?:
"Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as is labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a natural force, human labor power....The bourgeois have very good grounds for fancifully ascribing supernatural creative power to labor, since it follows precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature, that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, and hence only live with their permission."
Why do wealthy Californians hate the 'Okies'? How is Roman history supposedly replayed in the migrations of hungry families into California? Why does Steinbeck call them "the new barbarians"?
Why is it said that "a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children"? What is done to oranges and other produce if the price is low?
What is a Hooverville? Why is it given such a name?
Consider the significance of the following passage: "And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed."
What allusions is Steinbeck making when speaking of "the inevitability of that day"? What day is he talking about? What is Steinbeck effectively foretelling? How does he interpret biblical and religious ideas?