The Grapes of Wrath: A Warning to the System

The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck create s and shifts tone to show the failure of the economic system and how that failure causes people’s anger anger to grow inside them, like grapes, growing ripe for harvest. At the beginning of the chapter, the tone is positive. He describes California in the spring, using positive diction such as “beautiful” and “full green hills” (Paragraph 1).
H e also describes al of the crops, how the tree limbs “bend gradually under the fruit” because t here is so much of it. Steinbeck makes nature seem perfect; the hills are “round and soft as break SST” and the men are “of understanding and knowledge” (paragraphs 2 and 3). He creates a sense o f hope which is only to be destroyed later on in the chapter. In paragraph 5, the fruit begins t o ripen. This is when money is introduced: “Hell, we can’t pick ‘me for that. ” Right away, with the nit reduction of money, the tone shifts from positive to negative.
Words such as “hell” and cool Ours like “black” and “red” are used. The reason for this shift in tone IS because the starving pee people are angry because there is an over abundance of food that is just being wasted. Paragraph pH 12 simply says “And the smell of rot fills the country. ” This describes all of the wasted food, the e word “rot” insinuates that the economic system stinks. Sanchez 2 The last few paragraphs are a warning to the system. In paragraph 13, Steins eek uses parallelism: “Burn coffee for fuel in the ships [s] laughter the pigs and bury t me” (paragraph 13).

He does this to emphasize how this was deliberately being done just so a profit could be made. He writes about how crime “goes beyond denunciation” (paragraph 14) . People are so desperate for food that they are willing to do anything to get it. Children die b cause “a profit cannot be taken from an orange. ” All of these horrible things lead up to the la SST paragraph of the chapter; the warning to the system. People are trying to fish for potatoes that have just been dumped in the river, but the guards hold them back.
They are trying to grab t he dumped oranges, “but the kerosene is sprayed. ” Eventually, the hungry become furious. Food the at they could be eating is being wasted simply because a profit cannot be made from it. Their anger IS growing inside of them like the “grapes of wrath,” growing ripe for the harvest. The book title itself is used in this chapter. It is used to describe how people’s wrath is growing like grapes, “growing heavy for the vintage. ” This indicates that some wing big is going to happen: the harvest.