The Turtle from Thegrapes of Wrath(Pg 758 - )

“The Turtle” from TheGrapes of Wrath(pg 758 - )

by John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (Feb. 27, 1902 – Dec. 20, 1968) was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining sympathetic humor and keen social perception".

Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, Salinas, California. He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers on sugar beet farms. There he became aware of the harsher aspects of migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material expressed in such works as Of Mice and Men. After high school Steinbeck studied English Literature at Stanford University, graduating in 1925. During the Great Depression, Steinbeck bought a small boat, and later claimed that he was able to live on the fish and crab that he gathered from the sea, as well as fresh vegetables from his garden and local farms. When that didn't work, he got welfare and even stole food from local markets. Steinbeck began to write a series of "California novels" and Dust Bowl fiction, set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. In 1943, Steinbeck served as a World War II war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and worked with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA). John Steinbeck died in New York City on December 20, 1968, of heart disease and congestive heart failure; he had been a lifelong smoker.

The Grapes of Wrath has been banned by school boards: in August 1939, Kern County banned the book from the county's public schools and libraries. It was burned in Salinas on two different occasions. In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it. According to the American Library Association Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004. Steinbeck’s works tend to support the “under-dog” – the poor, the mentally retarded, the socially outcast. The Grapes of Wrath is set in the Great Depression and describes a family of sharecroppers, the Joads, who were driven from their land due to the dust storms of the Dust Bowl. The title is an allusion to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

(Hummm… just from the title, what could the author be trying to say is his view of life?)

Contrasts and Contradictions

Definition: The character acts in a way that is contradictoryorunexpectedgiven how he/she normally acts.

Text Clue: Author shows feelings or actions the reader hasn’t seenbeforeordoesn’t expect.

Question: Why would a character act this way?

While Reading: Look for ways a character acts that:

... are contradictory (opposite or different) to how the character has acted in the past.

… contrast with how you would act in that situation.

… reveal a difference among characters (a way that this character is different from another).

Ask: “…Why did the character act (or feel) this way?

What character or feeling was
unexpected? / Pg
# / What was unexpected about the action or feeling? / Why do you think the character acted/ felt this way? (What inference can you make about why the character would act this way?)
“As the embankment grew steeper and steeper, the more frantic were the efforts of the land turtle.” / 7
5
9 / Why does the turtle become frantic when it becomes more difficult? Don’t people often stop doing something that becomes harder and harder?
“…the back legs went to work, straining like elephant legs…” / 7
6
0 / What is driving this turtle to cross the road?
What character or feeling was
unexpected? / Pg
# / What was unexpected about the action or feeling? / Why do you think the character acted/ felt this way? (What inference can you make about why the character would act this way?)
“. . .the front tipped down, the front legs scratched at the pavement and the turtle was up.” / 7
6
0 / Why do we keep trying to do difficult things?
“Now the going was easy. . .” / 7
6
1 / In literature (and in life), what sometimes happens when the “difficult” suddenly becomes ”easy”?
“A sedan driven by a 40 year old woman approached.” / 7
6
1 / Why tell the reader that the driver is a woman?
“ She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up.” / 7
6
1 / Why tell the reader that the woman avoided the turtle? Don’t all people try to avoid hitting something?
“now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot.” / 7
6
1 / What can be so important to cross a “burning” road?
“ and now a light truck approached, … he saw the turtle and swerved to hit it.” / 7
6
1 / What? What type person would TRY to hit a turtle? And, this is a man – is that important?
“His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle, spun it, rolled it off the highway. The truck went on its way.” / 7
6
1 / What just happened?
Why did HE hit the turtle and drive on?
What is the reader to think now?
“…legs waved in the air,… front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright.” / 7
6
1 / The turtle is finally able to right itself – takes some work, but in the end the turtle is up and back on track. Could this symbolize something? WHAT?
“The old humorous eyes looked ahead, the beak opened a little… toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust.” / 7
6
1 / Knowing all we know about John Steinbeck, what could he be trying to get his readers to think about life from this little episode in a larger text?