Dashed Hopes in Steinbeck's Writing
by Angela Cox
January 11, 2004
The Grapes of Wrath research paper
Nelson, Pd 4
The way in which an author deals with the themes he raises in his book define his place in the literary world. John Steinbeck’s themes have earned his high, if guarded, acclaim and vitriolic criticism. One overriding message throughout his works, exemplified here in The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl , and Of Mice and Men , is the dashing of hope, which makes his work fit well with high school English curricula. Steinbeck bends all the happy faculties of an author, such as symbols and imagery, into building the hopes of his readers parallel to that of the characters and then smashing both into a fading ocean of despair.
Steinbeck’s main talent lies in imagery; he can evoke beautiful, poignant pictures of places, images that burn across the mind like a branding iron. He demonstrates this early in his works, and by the second chapter the setting is brilliantly clear. With this technique, making the characters inside a world instead of a world around characters, he builds a foreboding, static tone. The land is permanent, the ultimate status quo, and the characters are kept in its natural cycle. In Of Mice and Men , it is a full two pages before any humans appear, and three paragraphs more before they are named. The first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath speaks only of people in the general, as “men and women huddled in their houses,” and nothing more specific. (Steinbeck, 5)
Not only does the setting carry Steinbeck’s stories, but it expresses the mood he wants to evoke at the time. The Pearl ends as “the pearl settled into the lovely green water and dropped toward the bottom....a crab...raised a little cloud of sand, and when it settled the pearl was gone,” a tranquil end to the evil. (Steinbeck, 118) The setting described is soft, and sets a gentle tone to the end, as does the clearing described carefully in Of Mice and Men , and the sheltering barn that ends The Grapes of Wrath .
While the setting is built by strong images and carries the tone, it is just that: tone and setting. Steinbeck’s message of shattered hope is best carried by the recurring symbols, such as dogs and infants. In The Grapes of Wrath , “The gruesome death [of the Joads’ dog] constitutes the first of many symbols foreshadowing the tragedies that await the family.” (SparkNotes, 3) This death jars the family’s hopes, especially Rose of Sharon’s and foreshadows acutely how the migrants’ dreams will be dashed along the road. In Of Mice and Men , there are several dogs. Candy’s dog is old and worn out, as are his hopes for the future at that point, and he gives it up to be shot after much persuasion. He has lost sight of his goals and finally given them up. However, Slim offers him a new puppy, coinciding with George offering him a part in his own dream. Lennie is offered one of the new puppies as well, and quickly weaves it into his dream of a farm with rabbits. But he kills the puppy, “takin’ ‘em outa the nest and handlin’” it, and it foreshadows the end of his and George’s dream. (Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men , 50) In The Pearl , there is no prominent dog, but they are ambience as “the hungry dogs...of the town searched endlessly for any dead fish or sea bird that might have floated in on a rising tide,” a symbol of the hopeless cycle of poverty in which Steinbeck’s characters always seem to be trapped. (Steinbeck, The Pearl , 18)
Another vessel of hope Steinbeck uses is infants. The Pearl focuses on a child, tending the child, giving everything to see that the child who is not even old enough to speak is well taken care of. Coyotito carries all of the main characters’ hopes. Through the whole story, Juana and Kino carry the child, only to have him shot to death at the end. And even after Coyotito is killed, Juana was “still holding her dead bundle over her shoulder,” like some grim reminder of dreams that once were. (117) In The Grapes of Wrath , the child is unborn most of the time, but still carries the family’s hopes. As they persevere, the family is always looking after Rose of Sharon for her child’s sake, making sure that, she has plenty of milk and rest, even while the rest nearly starve. They tend to her like Lennie and George tend to their dream, like Kino hears his dream singing to him constantly. When the child is born, the family’s hopes have been crushed and beaten, and the child is stillborn, “a blue shriveled little mummy,” all that is left of the family’s dreams of orange groves. (Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath , 567)
Of Mice and Men deserves a little more attention with respect to infants as vessels of hope. There are no children in Of Mice and Men , but there is a symbolic infant—Lennie. Lennie is not mature enough to understand the world on the level of the adults around him. He sees everything from the perspective of an innocent child. He likes soft and furry things, and he gets into trouble over this. His one dream is to take care of rabbits on a pleasant farm. He tends this dream with George as though it were a crop on that farm, begging for George to retell it like a child begs for a favorite bedtime story. George uses him as a vessel to keep that hope alive, and then the dream is lost when he must kill Lennie. In a sense, he must destroy his own dream. Lennie carrys double the symbolic weight here because “Lennie is George’s dog....Lennie is George’s responsibility...George shoots ‘his own dog’ at the end of the book.” (Stoddard)
None of these three tales by Steinbeck end in any sort of uplifting manner. It is something that can be expected from Steinbeck, as it is one of his overriding themes. Similarly, he expresses these themes in a predictable manner, through his powerful imagery and slightly overused symbols.
Works Cited:
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 1976.
---. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin, 1993.
---. The Pearl. New York: Bantam, 1983.
Stoddard, Samuel. “Of Mice and Men: Explanation.” Book-A-Minute Classics. 10 Jan. 2004
“ The Grapes of Wrath: Themes, Motifs & Symbols.” SparkNotes. 2003? 10 Jan. 2004