Monday, December 20, 2010
THEME #6: Connection to Author's Life
Enriched by our reading experiences, sharing specific examples from the novel and the short stories provides the chance to internalize key themes. Dig deep. Provide an example from one work that reflects the theme listed. Establish the context of your example. Quotes are ecouraged. Be sure to read through the entire post; do not use the same examples as classmates.
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John Steinbeck may not have suffered greatly during the Great Depression, but he spent many months traveling to various areas of suffering and documenting all of the strife. The Grapes of Wrath is a culmination of all of his findings. The suffering of the Joads is greatly similar to the suffering of many of the migrant workers.......he likely pulled his story together from a variety of stories from many migrant workers, and Steinbeck spent a great amount of time on his life on his work on the migrants. The Grapes of Wrath shows his experience in that field by showing in great detail all the terrible experiences of the joads, to represent all migrant workers.
ReplyDeleteLangston Hughes's poem, "Let America be American Again", talks about how the country had strayed form its original values. Throught his life, Hughes suffered from racial persecution, that was very commonplace of the time. In his poem, Hughes declared we needed to return to a country where all men are created equal, not just white land owners. Hughes made a proclomation for equality, that hardly recieved a response. Even the Social Security Act of 1935, the biggest new deal reform that is still around today, did not help most African Americans. It would not be until many years later that we began to tear down our racial boundaries, starting with marches on Washington, and nearly culmination with the 2008 presidential eleciton. However, we are not completely there, and we must let America be America again, where all men and women are created equal.
ReplyDeleteIn Stud Terkel's famous radio show Hard Times featured many different points of view on the Great Depression, from the famous to the errant, and took a personalized look at the tragedy. In his piece on Cesar Chavez, the life of the Mexican reformer was analyzed in what I consider the biggest connection to an authors life. Cesar Chavez lived a life that could almost parallel the Joads journey to California, but with added discrimination due to his Mexican heritage. He divided his time among 46 different elementary schools, and wandered his way west with his family. His struggle is a universal theme of the literature of the Great Depression, and is played out in most works of the time.
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