In chapter 19 of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck chooses to explain the history of the great and glorified state of California. In this chapter, Steinbeck makes the argument that the Mexicans that once tended to the land of California, were forced off the land by the vicious and greedy "squatters" who cared little to nothing of the land they now owned, and that farming was becoming more of an industry than a love for farming. Steinbeck reinforces his argument by using the rhetorical strategies of repetition and diction, so as to make his argument more clear to the reader.
Repetition is used quite a lot by Steinbeck in chapter 19 so as to reinforce the idea that the Mexicans were thrown off the California lands slowly but surely by the rich and greedy Americans, and how farming was becoming more of an industry. Steinbeck states that, "they could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as ferociously as the Americans wanted land" (231). When saying this, the author is saying that the Mexicans loved what they did on the land, but due to the "ferocious" squatters, they were not willing to fight the Americans for the land that they loved dearly. Steinbeck also repeats several times how they land that was loved and appreciated by the Mexicans, was then uncared for as beautiful, but instead the crops were "reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted" (231). In other words, Steinbeck is saying that Americans took a new outlook on the land on which they stood, and that they began to only look on what profit they would get from the land and how much money they could make off of the crops that it produced. All throughout the chapter Steinbeck mostly focuses on the fact that farming was now an industry and that due to this industry many were without jobs and were left creating "secret gardens" within the big industries' fields. Unfortunately these people generally got caught and their gardens would be destroyed, such as one farmers' "little green carrot tops were kicked off and the turnip greens trampled" (235).
Diction also played a main part in how Steinbeck brought about his argument that the Mexicans were thrown out by the greedy Americans and that faming was becoming more of an industry than of a love for what farmers do. "Once California belonged to the Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in," here Steinbeck could have said that the Americans began to come to California and live there, but instead he wanted to use stronger, almost filthy terms to describe how the newcomers were like (231). Steinbeck has a tone of disdain for the Americans that had the gall to kick the Mexicans out of California so that they would be able to run a successful business. Soon the Americans were lost in the thought that land was only meant to bring in money so when there was a crop failure, drought, and flood they no longer were "little deaths within life, but simple losses of money," and for this Steinbeck mocked them (232). The diction used in this sentence shows clearly the apathy the land owners had for the land on which they harvested crops. Steinbeck uses simple diction so as to reinforce how shallow the new land owners were, and the simple words that the author chose to use to describe the owners truly mocks them indirectly, but nonetheless Steinbeck is still mocking them.
In conclusion, Steinbeck uses repetition and diction in chapter 19 so as to reinforce his argument that the greedy American "squatters" kicked out the poor Mexican farmers for the sole purpose of obtaining a lot of land so as to get a lot of money from the crops, and that these newcomers were turning farming into an industry instead of a love of what a farmer does.
No comments:
Post a Comment