The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Essay -- farm, tractors, land own

The bright colors and nice shirts all grab your attention at the store, but how did the cotton, grain, or wheat in the products come to be? In Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, mechanization brings capitalism and other unintended consequences, leads to the decision for land owners of whether to run a business using greed or virtue, and separates the working class. Steinbeck starts The Grapes of Wrath by showing the Joad family who had just been removed from their farm. The Joads are one family of a monstrous number of families to be removed from their farms. They were raised on the land, some died on the land, and they were with approximately seven million families that lived on farms in the same day (â€Å"U.S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY,† 10). The banks told the Farmers’ Association to lower the overhead of all agricultural products by employing possibly one or two men to take the place of sixteen other men. The owner of the land had the choice to both get rich and be extremely wealthy by profiting off the loss and pain of others or to become one who is taken advantage of and becoming hungry and poor. One of the main unintended consequences of employing one man to drive the tractor was a loss of contact to the land. The land owners became completely separated from their land. The people who farmed in the same way as the Joads lived for the land, and they lived because of the land. This relationship between farmer and land was destroyed due to the introduction of the tractor to the land. Land owners no longer knew when they needed to give the land a break, and for this reason many pieces of land became totally dust and truly became unformidable to any type of farming. This overuse of the land led to what we know as the Dust B... ...reed which totally annihilated the working class’s bond of unity. If the working class had united maybe they would not have been so very miserable for such a long time. Maybe the Dustbowl would have never happened. Works Cited â€Å"Article III.† The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. Charles Wollenberg, ed. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988. â€Å"Article IV.† The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath. Charles Wollenberg, ed. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1988. Harvey, John, John Crowley, and Jack Hayes. U.S. Government. Department of Agriculture. Face of Rural America. 1975. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939. Eds. Peter Lisca with Kevin Hearle. New York: Viking,1997. Rasmussen, Wayne D.. "The Challenge of Change." Trans. Array U.S. Agriculture in a Global Economy. 1985. "U.S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY." The Reference Shelf. 38. New York: 1966.

From dependence to independence Essay

From dependence to independence – To what degree does Jo mature during the play and become less dependent on other people? Jo was a naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve young schoolgirl, dependent on her unreliable mother Helen, never knowing her father. She was trapped between school, her mother and grotty little bedsits, never really having an outside life. This kept her young, so she was often childish and had a fear of the dark. Jo was desperate to leave her mother and spread her wings. Her life is a roller coaster and the play shows her life with its ups and downs. From meeting the black sailor, to getting ready to give birth, we see her mature and become independent. In Act 1, Scene 1, we find out about Jo’s schooling and talents. When she arrives, she wants to find somewhere to plant her bulbs. As she says, â€Å"It’s nice to see a few flowers.† Helen also finds some drawings that Jo had done and gives her a rare compliment by saying, â€Å"I didn’t realise I had such a talented daughter.† Jo replies by saying, â€Å"I’m not just talented, I’m geniused.† Jo is also intent of leaving school – and Helen – at Christmas. She seems to think that she is mature enough to do so. She hates the flat and when Helen says, â€Å"This is the place,† Jo replies, â€Å"And I don’t like it.† She hates life and doesn’t realise how good it can be because she is always on the move. She also seems lonely. This is most likely because she is never in one place long enough to make any friends. Her mother gives her very little support so she must seek affection from other sources. She is sarcastic, but witty and is always answering Helen back. Although she seems to hate Helen, Jo is very dependent on her and – to a certain extent – Helen is dependent on Jo. She is always making Jo do things for her (getting drinks, cooking, etc). Jo and Helen are mother and daughter but someone who didn’t know them, might think that they were strangers that abhorred each other. The pair are constantly bickering and Jo even says, â€Å"I’m sick of you. You’ve made my life a misery.† Jo blames Helen for her misfortune and, in truth; most of it is Helen’s fault. There is no typical mother / daughter relationship between them. They mainly communicate through bickering and rasied voices. Jo is desperate to leave her mother as soon as she has the chance. The teenager is always criticising Helen and vice versa, although Jo does a lot more, for example, â€Å"You’re knocking it back worse than ever.† Jo never calls Helen ‘mother’. This is probably because Helen never acted like mother and cared for her daughter like a mother should. Even Helen says, â€Å"I know, I’m a cruel, wicked woman,† not using the word ‘mother’. Towards the end of the play, Helen comes back to live with Jo. The readers then think that she has decided to be a good mother before her child deserts her. Instead we see that Peter has thrown her out and Helen has become the dependant party, not Jo. There is total role reversal here as Jo has matured but Helen is immature – perhaps naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve – thinking that she can just move back in with Jo and return everything back to how it was. Peter is a brash car salesman with an eye patch. Helen moved again to get away from him but he tracked her down. He wants her to marry him but Helen declines the first time but agrees when he persists. Jo seems to hate him and even asks if he’s already married. She seems spiteful and full of hatred towards Peter. They are both fighting for Helen’s love. Jo asks Peter, â€Å"Do you fancy me?† and he responds, â€Å"Not yet.† He also has photographs of all his ex-girlfriends. Jo teases him quite a bit, asking about his eye and why he’s marrying Helen. Jo also has a fear of the dark, â€Å"I’m not frightened of the darkness outside. It’s the darkness inside I don’t like.† This could be that she is only scared of her future and not what’s happening to everyone else. Jo lives in a poor, sad life and her needs are not important to Helen and the terrible mother neglects Jo a lot, for example, leaving her alone for a weekend while she runs off with Peter. Helen also makes no attempt to help Jo when she’s pregnant. Because of the lack of motherly love, Jo is determined to become independent. She plans to move out, get a job and marry a black sailor. Her mother disapproves but that makes Jo even more single-minded. She is only sixteen so we see that she is pretty independent for her age. She is growing less dependant on Helen, which is a good thing. Readers may think that she is doing this because she has realised that Helen will never love her as much as her many boyfriends. Jo had a brief love affair with a black sailor. Readers never find out his name but Jo calls him Jimmie. It is a quick relationship as he has to leave but the relationship is quite odd. They both say that they love each other but are very relaxed with each other and Jo doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t come back. Jimmie offers quite a lot of comfort. He is older than Jo and they could move in together if he wasn’t always on the move. He also asks Jo to marry him. She jumps at the opportunity, probably because it means she can leave Helen. As I said, Jo appears to love the sailor but doesn’t expect him to return and doesn’t panic when there’s no sign of him. This could be because her life is so bad anyway, that she becomes pessimistic and doesn’t expect her life to improve in any way. She has had her taste of honey and it has gone forever. Her ideas about him do change. Jo says, â€Å"Last Christmas I had him,† and she realises that she loves and misses him but only when the baby is due. It seems to her that it was all a dream and she can’t remember the reality. The trouble is, the dream left her pregnant with an unintended baby so it must be real. While Helen’s away, Jo meets Geoff, a gay, art student and the pair move in together, without Helen knowing. In today’s society, there is nothing wrong with this but homosexuals were frowned upon in the 1950’s. Geoff is an ideal best friend for Jo. She is no longer dependent on Helen but is instead dependent on Geoff, probably more than she was on her mother. Jo even says, supposedly to the baby, â€Å"Let’s see what big sisters making us.† Geoff is a friendly carer and is totally different from the sailor. Whereas the sailor wants a sexual relationship, Geoff is content with caring for Jo and making cakes. Geoff even asks Jo if they should get married and also asks her what she’d do if he started something. Jo replies, â€Å"In my condition, I’d probably faint.† He adores babies but Jo is less keen on them. Geoff seems to want, more than anything, to be the father of Jo’s child. To begin with, Jo treats Geoff with little respect, joking around and saying things that could hurt him. As their relationship progresses and they get to know each other better, Jo respects Geoff more and more. Jo eventually realises that the baby will need a father figure and decides to let Geoff stay, but they wouldn’t get married. Jo has mixed feelings about becoming a mother. She is intent on keeping the baby at first because she thinks it is cruel to have them aborted. She does, though, have some doubts. For example, she doesn’t want to breast feed her baby. Geoff brings her a doll to practice holds on. She says the colour’s wrong – the father being black – and explodes. She screams, â€Å"I’ll bash its brains out! I’ll kill it! I don’t want to be a mother,† which makes us think that she may have an abortion after all. Previously though, the baby kicked her and she was overwhelmed. All of these details then leave us wondering if she is ready for motherhood. It is more likely that she is ready to become a mother because she has matured a lot since the beginning of the play when she was dependant on Helen. As the play progresses, we see Jo turn from a naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve young girl to a mature woman. She is no longer dependant on anyone and, although she is probably destined to a life living in small flats and houses, the prospects are bright and, as she sings at the very end, a glimmer of hope shines through and we think she may have a happy life.

Intellectual Disability, Better, Or Better Known As ( Id )...

Intellectual Disability, better known as (ID) is a disorder. Most people who have (ID), if not found out about in childhood, may get misdiagnosed. There are different components that determine a person’s diagnosis of Intellectual Disability. Genetic factors (A person s genetic makeup); Prenatal issues and illnesses (before birth); Childhood illnesses and issues as well as Environmental factors all play a part in the determinant of Intellectual Disability(WebMD,2016). Because Intellectual Disability is a neurodevelopmental disorder, it affects a person’s intellectual and adaptive functioning. Testing of one’s IQ (Intellectual Quotient) will determine their Intellectual level. There are three levels of Intellectual disability. When there is Mild Intellectual Disability, a person’s (IQ) is below 70 (50-69) as well as impairments in two or more adaptive areas. A person in this stage may not be discovered until they are of school age In the second stage, Moderate Intellectual Disability, a person’s (IQ) is between the range of (35-49). Delays are noticeable very early in life because the child may display a big delay in learning skills, such as walking and talking, which are very big indicators of a Moderate Intellectual Disability. Those who have Moderate Intellectual Disability usually live at home with parents or in some type of supportive housing. Severe/Profound Intellectual Disability is the most serious. 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