Characters in "The Grapes of Wrath": Uncle John

Uncle John is a very important character to The Grapes of Wrath. He provides insight into the poor people that have breakdowns. He had some trouble before The Grapes of Wrath with a young pregnant wife. She had been feeling sick, but he did not want to pay for a doctor. He told her to just take some medicine and suck it up. She obviously had been more sick than either of them had any knowledge of, because she died the next day. He thought it was all his fault and blamed himself for the rest of his life. It caused him much grief and guilt, and from then on he tried to be perfect. He fasted constantly, had no beer, and gave all he had to the less fortunate. He relapsed all the time though. He would binge on food or beer, but after he was finished, he immediately felt worse and even more guilty than before. He tagged along with the rest of the Joads to California, but his heart was not in it. His heart had been taken from him along with his wife and their child. He tried to restrain himself from binging, but he declared that his "sin" in not taking his pregnant wife to the doctor and having her checked out, overpowered him and he needed to have some drinks. He had some money that he had put aside in case it would happen, so he went to the nearest store and bought as much liquor as he could. He got totally drunk, so that Tom had to carry him to the truck so that the Joads could move. He kept claiming that his "sins" made him do everything and affected everything that he did, even though his "sins" were only in his mind and no one else put any faith in that theory. Uncle John was not an influential character, but he was still important to The Grapes of Wrath.

Characters in "The Grapes of Wrath": Ma

Another extremely important character in The Grapes of Wrath is Ma. She plays a vital role in the book, because she is the center of the family, and she helps make a lot of decisions. Ma is a very strong woman, because she basically carries the household. She keeps everyone happy and makes sure everyone has what they need. Everyone in the household relies on her to keep them calm, relaxed, and comfortable. If she shows that she is upset, everyone else in the family will become upset as well. In the beginning of the book, Pa is the main decisionmaker, and while he looks to Ma for affirmation, she still does not do as much of the decisionmaking as she could. When the family makes the decision to move west, she becomes a lot more vocal about her opinions, because she does not always believe that the family is making good decisions. She becomes more aggravated and makes everyone listen to her and follow her orders. She interrupts Pa, does not let him give orders to the rest of the familiy, and basically beats him, through her words, into submission. She is willing to do just about anything to get what she wants or needs. She is prepared to steal, harm, or even kill to give her family what it needs. She wants to keep her family together because she believes in numbers. She also believes that if she keeps the family together, they will all be stronger and have much better chances at staying alive and well. Ma will not let her children get away with everything though. If anyone in her family whines or complains, Ma immediately reprimands them. If they do anything wrong, she will punish them and make sure they learn their lesson. When the family is falling apart, Ma is always there to fix everything and put it all back together. Ma is always there for the family, and she is a very strong woman.

Setting of "The Grapes of Wrath"

The Grapes of Wrath had quite a variety of settings. The Joads travel halfway across the country just looking for work so they can earn some money. The book begins with the Joads in Oklahoma, where they have lived for generations. They have a quaint little farm that the whole family loves. No one wants to leave, but they must. The bank drives them out because they can not pay the mortgage. They move to Uncle John's for a while to try to get back on their feet. Uncle John's farm is a pretty dreary farm that they do not all fit in and have a hard time staying in. Soon they realize that they need mone, so they decide to move west because they had heard that there was work out there. They prepare all of their family and their belongings, and head to California. They live in tents and under a tarp for the next few weeks. They are all extremely crowded and do not like staying as close together as they must, and their roofs leak, but they have learned to deal with it and not complain. They live in their tents and under their tarp until the Hooversville they had been staying in was burnt. The Hoversville was not really a town at all. It was a group of shcaks and tents decently close to a source of water. There were not sanitary conditions, but no one seemed to care, because no one can do anything about it. After the Hooversville, they moved to a government camp, which had much better conditions. They had toilets, showers, sinks to wash clothers in, running water that could be made hot, and dances. The government camp was governed by the people in it, and they did not allow police officers in. Soon, though, they needed more work, so they had to leave the government camp. They moved to a boxcar that was more like the Hooversville they started in. They were just closer to the river and were elevated above the ground, which helped them greatly. They only disadvantage was htat htey had to share the boxcar with another family, but they quickly got over it. The book ends with them in a barn getting shelter from a storm. There are many settings in The Grapes of Wrath, and they are all interesting.

Plot of "The Grapes of Wrath"

The Grapes of Wrath is a pretty long book, so many things happen through the course of it. The main thing John Steinbeck is trying to convey is how difficult it was for the poor people during the Great Depression. He describes how the Joads, a poor farming family, are kicked off their land in Oklahoma because they did not have a big enough crop to pay the bank, whom they had mortgaged their house to. They had received handbills saying that there was work out west, so they decided to head to California to find work. There were thirteen people going west: Ma, Pa, Granma, Grampa, Uncle John, Casy, a preacher, Noah, Tom, Rose of Sharon, who was pregnant, Connie, her husband, Al, Ruthie, and Winfield. They sell most of their possessions so they can buy a car and still have more money for gas and supplies on the way. They get the supplies they need, hurriedly pack up, and head out. They run into car troubles along the way, and Grampa dies, because he is heartbroken about leaving the farm. They camp on the side of the road wherever they find someone else. The night before they reach California, Ganma dies. She had been sick and delirious since Grampa died, and she had no chance of getting better. Noah, who Pa had dropped on his head as a child, left them right before they reached California, because he believed he could make the most of his life by staying in the wilderness. When they get there, there is no work, so they get to a Hooversville and stay there until the Hooversville gets burnt down. While there, there was an incident with a sheriff that Casy took the blame for, so he went to jail. Connie left at that point, because the pressure was too much for him. After that Hooversville was burnt down, the Joads moved to a government camp. They had work for a few days, but quickly ran out of food and money, so they had to leave to find work. They found work picking cotton, but soon all that cotton was gone. They stayed living in the boxcar that they had been in, but found more work. Tom left then, because he had found Casy. Someone killed Casy, so he killed that man, and had to disappear. Rose of Sharon worked, which made her sick, so she had her baby early and it was stillborn. Al got engaged to Aggie, the girl whose family shared the other end of their boxcar. It started pouring, and did not stop until it overflowed the bottom of the boxcar. Everyone went to find shelter except for Al. They found a barn, and when they got there, they found a boy and his starving father. He could not have any solid food, so Rose of Sharon and Ma kicked everyone out, and Rose of Sharon breast-fed him. That is how the book ends.

Characters in "The Grapes of Wrath": Rose of Sharon

The next character in The Grapes of Wrath is Rose of Sharon, or Rosasharn, according to the accents of the rest of the family. Rose of Sharon tries to be a strong girl, but as she is pregnant, she is very hormonal and struggles to suppress her emotions. Rose of Sharon helps her family move out west and her husband Connie comes along. Connie and Rose of Sharon plan to have a nice house with Connie having a steady job so their baby will have a nice life. Soon though, the pressure becomes too much for Connie and he leaves the Joad family. Rose of Sharon has an incredibly hard time with this, because his leaving breaks her heart. Her family is the kind of family that does not show emotions, so they do not like the fact that she is so willing to cry and show how upset she is about her husband leaving her. They let it go, but only because she is pregnant so they do not expect much out of her. She complains a lot and whines about the fact that he has left. She constantly is asking for milk and bothering her mom about getting some because that is what a nurse told her that she needs. She does not like doing anything and just wants to be able to sit around being waited on. With her family in trouble, she works one day, which cause her to be sick and give birth to her baby early. The baby is stillborn, which causes Rose of Sharon even more emotional turmoil. She curls up in a corner and just lays there crying for an extremely long amount of time. She does help out in the end though, as the man in the barn needed milk and that was what she had to offer. In The Grapes of Wrath, Rose of Sharon is portrayed as an extremely emotional woman that wants everything to go her way and struggles when her life is not stable.

Characters in "The Grapes of Wrath": Tom

There were a number of characters in The Grapes of Wrath, so it is very hard to discuss them all in just a general overview. This blog will be about Tom. Tom's story begins the story of the Joads. He was on his way home from jail when the book starts. He was in jail because he had killed a man, but he only did it in self-defense. Tom was a very strong character in The Grapes of Wrath, but sometimes he was a little bit reckless and fearful. He was more knowledgeable since he had been in jail and had learned things there, but he was still mildly naive about some of the ways of the world. He had learned to be strong from his jail time, but he also learned to be strong throughout the story. He learned throughout the story because he was one of the two people in the family that knew how to drive and he was also one of the main providers for the family, so he learned to be strong through the responsibilities that he had to take on. He was somewhat reckless in that before he went to jail, because all he was worried about were the girls in his life and who he wanted to mess with at the moment. He did not worry very much, he just liked to have fun, like many teenage boys. The only difference was that one of the nights that he was having fun turned into a nightmare that got him sent to prison. He was fearful because he got out of prison on bail, and if he left Oklahoma, he would be breaking it. He family needed him, though, so he went with them to California. As long as he did nothing wrong and was not caught for three years, it would not matter, but until then, he needed to lie low. He was fearful that he would be caught and sent back to Oklahoma, away from his family, to finish his jail sentence. While Tom was pretty simple-minded, he was still a very central part of the Joad family.

Supporting Characters in "The Old Man and the Sea"

The Old Man and the Sea has very few characters, but there is one main character, one supporting character, and a few other characters that were mentioned in passing. The main character is the Old Man, whom the story is centered around. The supporting character is the Boy, whom helps out the Old Man quite a bit. Some of the characters mentioned in passing are the Boy's parents and the crew of the new ship that the Boy was forced to fish on. The Boy was very supportive of the Old Man. He helped out the Old Man every chance that he got, and did everything in his power to show his loyalties. He drank with the Old Man at the bar, took him back to his house and even brought him supper. He carried half of the Old Man's supplies to and from the Old Man's ship, bought him some bait, and made sure that he got plenty of rest. The Boy was very loyal to the Old Man and had faith in him even when no one else did. The Boy's parents and the crew of the new ship that the Boy had been forced to fish on were only mentioned in passing, but they were still important to the story. The Boy's parents did not believe in the Old Man, along with the rest of the villagers, so after a long period of time when the Old Man did not catch any fish, they made the Boy fish with another ship. The other ship steadily brought in fish, so the Boy's parents made him fish with them, because they wanted the Boy to have a steady income. By catching more fish, the Boy had a more steady income and he also had a greater income. While The Old Man and the Sea had very few characters, the book was still very good, and it worked out well that the book had a very small number of characters, because the book ended up better that way.