The 1930s－ The Red Decade

Dos Passos’ U.S.A. and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath an authentic account of the American experience in the debilitating years of the Depression.

the "radical" 30's—A dim decade, a dark time, a decade that features the Great Depression and rural poverty.

Destitute pea pickers in California. A Migrant Mother

John Dos Passos(1896-1970)

"I regard John Dos Passos as the greatest writer of our time” ----- Jean Paul Sartre

the leading writer of the Depression

His Political Outlook: P261 The First Period: Writing for the oppressed Communist-oriented A red radical revolutionary

The Second Period: a New Dealer, dismissed communism but the attack on capitalism remained vehement

The Third Period: his complete change to conservatism in the fifties

Major Works

Manhattan Transfer (1925) (a realistic attack upon urban life)

Trilogy U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), The Big Money (1936)

Trilogy District of Columbia:Adventures of a Young Man (1939) Number One (1943) The Grand Design (1949)

Three Soldiers(1921)

U.S.A. Trilogy

U.S.A.----A Collectivist Novel Unique for its epic scale and panoramic social sweep, the trilogy U.S.A. creates an unforgettable collective portrait of modern America.

"One of the cornerstone achievements of American literature, a work of such scope and ambition that it seems imbued with the very essence of its place and time.” —Newsday

Newsreel: constructed collages of actual newspaper headlines, news story fragments, bits and pieces of political speeches, song lyrics and so on

Techniques( experimental literary devices) P263

Camera Eye: stream-of-consciousness fragments depicting the developing awareness of a sensitive person

Biography: Portraits of a number of real people

Newsreel: gives an inkling of the common mind of the epoch.

Portraits of a number of real people: their lives seem to embody so well the quality of the soil in which Americans of these generations grew.

The Camera Eye: aims to indicate the position of the observer

His Contribution

Dos Passos’s style of emphasizing history and current events in his narrative and his striving to produce an all-encompassing portrait of the America of his time influenced many later writers of the twentieth century, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Norman Mailer.

P264

JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968)1962 Nobel Prize in Literature

"for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception. ”

Steinbeck’s words

• The writer's first duty was to “set down his time as nearly as he can understand it” and serve as “the watch-dog of society ... to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults."

STEINBECK’s Birthplace

Steinbeck Center, Salinas

Major Works

• Tortilla Flat (1935)• In Dubious Battle (1936) • Of Mice and Men (1937) • The Long Valley (1938) • The Grapes of Wrath (1939) • The Moon Is Down (1942) • East of Eden (1952) • Travels with Charley: In Search of America

(1962)

Scenes like this one, of an 18-year-old mother from Oklahoma at a California migrant camp, inspired Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

THE EPIC STORY OF THE JOAD FAMILY'SMIGRATION FROM THE OKLAHOMA DUST BOWL TO THE PROMISED LAND OF CALIFORNIA

• awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

• Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry.

• In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California's Salinas Valley along with thousands of other "Okies" in search of land, jobs and dignity.

Themes1. Man’s Inhumanity to Man

2. The Saving Power of Family and Fellowship“twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.”

3. The Dignity of Wrath4. The Multiplying Effects of Selfishness and Altruism

P265&6

Features• Structure: P267• 1. two blocks of material;• A. the westward trek of the Joads• B. the dispossessed Oklahomans &the general p

icture of the Great Depression• 2. the intercalary chapters• 3. the Bible indicated• A. three sections correspond to “The Exodus”• B. symbols: the grapes, Rose of Sharon, Ma Jo

ad, stillborn child

Symbols

1. Grapes

The grapes of hope: a new and better way of lifeThe festering grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

P266

2. Rose of Sharon’s Pregnancy

the promise of a new beginning The way in which Uncle John disposes of the child’s corpse recalls Moses being sent down the Nile. The image suggests that the family, like the Hebrews in Egypt, will be delivered from the slavery of its present circumstances.

P268

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad andJane Darwell as Ma Joad in the 1940 John Ford film The Grapes of Wrath.