The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter One

The introductory chapter primarily functions as anchoring a setting. Steinbeck lets us know where we should be in the imagination, but he takes the opportunity to load the text with much more significant and subtle meaning. For instance, I noted in my boko that in the first paragraph of the novel there are clashing images of life flourishing and life coming to an end, or the process of dying. In the second paragraph, I lifted out the action of weeping with "the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry little streams" when compliomented with "the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they ent in a curve at first, and then, as the dentral irbs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward." I think the author is setting the tone of the book, probably chosen to match the reality of the emotion spectrum experienced by those living in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. A few paragraphs later I noted that the the gentle wind that pushed the clouds northward was personifing a mother who ushers her curious children along although the children want to stay and play longer. The author includes how dust found its way into everything. When I was in Korea I had a similar experience myself. Yellow dust was picked up by a jet stream originating in China and brought it down to Korea. I have never been sick with allergies, never had to wear a mask outside...although it is probably nothing in coparison to the dust bowl, I wouldn't ever want to sit through a season of yellow dust again.