Text Connections

Connecting to the Text

            Most of my young life I have been lucky enough to not have been faced with the tragedy of death; however, the past year adversity has entered my life in the form of death. John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath, a novel set in the era of the Great Depression, finally became appealing to me when I read of Grampa’s death. I became emotionally attached to The Grapes of Wrath as Grampa faded away from a stroke.

            Grampa passed away shortly into the Joad family’s journey across the country to California. They were in search of a better life after being pushed from their homeland in the South. Paralleling my life, I recently said goodbye to my dead Grandmother. There is something about a lifeless body that makes a person think about their own life and its worth. In the story of Tom Joad and his family, Grampa’s death is the first death to really convey a theme in the novel: life vs. death. Life in many ways represents the West, a hope for survival and prosperity in a time of heartache and death. Death then representing the fate they were escaping. As Casy, the preacher, says the prayers for Grampa at his small funeral, he iterates the importance of life and its dominance over the insignificant dead. This was something I realized while standing over my Grandmother’s dead body; it was not the time I had missed with her that was significant, it was the time that I was now going to make a point to spend with my relatives who still had life in them. Throughout the novel it is emphasized—especially with the Joad’s will to never turn back home—that looking forward is of utmost importance; looking back is like looking back to death, hopeless and helpless.