Grapes of Wrath Essay Example for Free

Grapes of Wrath Essay In Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote about the Joads and their forced migration from Oklahoma to California. They were forced to leave their simple farming life because of the Great Depression. Through the struggles of the members and friends of the Joads, Steinbeck was able to portray an undesirable, yet accurate picture of America in the early twentieth century. Thus, this story is considered as one of the most powerful social novels in human history. But, Steinbeck did not just describe the country where he lived. In the later part of the novel, Steinbeck crafted a political message that is intended to change the present and unacceptable state of America. In Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin wrote a series of essays about the experiences, thoughts, and struggles of an African-American deep in the heart of Europe. The collection of essays appears to be a rite of passage for Baldwin who did not want to be labeled as a Negro writer, but simply an American writer. But, through the series of essays, Baldwin wove together his own political message, which wanted to radically shift the point of view of society about what America is all about. In both pieces of literature, it can be found that the written works of art are not just mere expressions of the authors’ creativity. This is because a simple creative expression is wandering and aimless. The written art is similar to a powerful sword that can be wielded to effect political and social changes, but this figurative sword obeys the authors’ personal views that are derived from their personal experiences. Despite the personal basis of the authors’ opinions, the political nature of the written art is needed in societies that are thrown in the midst of division and conflict because the political nature of written art serves as a guiding beacon of light, both for the ordinary citizens and for the political leaders. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath has many interpretations that originate from varying perspectives, such as religious, economic, social, political, and personal. The same could be said of Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name. Different and numerous interpretations of literary works are acceptable because that is the nature of all literary works and the authors could not be confronted and asked to choose which interpretation is the most accurate. It is probable that Steinbeck purposely wove a novel that is a mosaic of several messages. And it is also probable that Baldwin delved into different issues and each essay in the said collection might be about more than one perspective. But, in comparing the novel and the essay collection, the two perspectives that will be analyzed are the similar personal and the political beliefs of the authors about the American society. Both Steinbeck and Baldwin see a divided American society. In Steinbeck’s novel, the division is between the rich and the poor. This division is felt sharply in the Great Depression when the rich and powerful preyed on the desperation of the poor people. The reputed rich grape vineyards in California became attractive to the Joads and other poor people who are suffering the pangs of hunger due to the poor harvest. The house was dead, and the fields were dead† (Steinbeck, 135). The family chose to uproot themselves and went to California. But, the vineyards did not deliver the promise of providing enough food security for the people. Instead, the Joads toiled hard, day and night, but remained poor, oppressed, and discriminated. In Baldwin’s essay, the division is between the Blacks and the White. The Civil War has ended but the discrimination against the Black Americans remained. Many Americans gave lip service to the concept of equality and assimilation, but it is far more difficult to remove the generations-old dogma of Blacks being an inferior race. Hoping to achieve the desired state of equality, the Blacks fought by excelling in the fields of sports, music, and literature. But this was not enough. Instead, the Blacks continued to endure discrimination. The nature of the division that was described by Steinbeck may not be exactly the same as the division described by Baldwin. But the division and the conflict are strongly felt. And because of the presence of the conflict, America is not united. Unfortunately, there are more conflicts that exist other than the conflict between people of different races and people who come from different socio-economic status. There are conflicts based on gender, education, and sexual orientation. â€Å"The tensions of American life, as well as the possibilities, are tremendous† (Baldwin, 11). But what could be the long-term implications of having a divided country? Both Steinbeck and Baldwin predicted that the present divisions in America would lead to overwhelming wrath that might destroy society. In Steinbeck’s novel, the poor finds that many of their opportunities are kept away from them or wasted away by the rich and powerful. â€Å"The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back †¦ in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath† (Steinbeck, 477). It is suggested that the travels of Steinbeck revealed to him the desolate state of his country and the increasing resentment of the poor. In Baldwin’s essay Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a Letter from Harlem, he described the rotting and festering social situation of Harlem, the corner of the world where he grew up. Baldwin drew upon his experiences and observations when he was still living in Harlem to create this essay that depicts the oppression that the Whites wielded through the police. The policemen â€Å"represent the force of the white world the black man corralled up here, in his place† (Baldwin, 57). The Blacks have began to realize that they were being discriminated and that the basic right to human dignity was been taken away from them through the selfish and callous way that the Whites treated them in the past decades. But, instead of being apologetic, the Whites, being the majority, demanded assimilation. It would be inevitable that the Blacks would feel resentment. And with resentment, there would be a burgeoning anger. Steinbeck and Baldwin are personally aware of the negative effects of the existing conflicts in their societies. They knew that anger would be fermented. There is a limit to the patience of the people who are being oppressed. What then should Americans do with the existing conflicts in their country? Both Steinbeck and Baldwin personally believed that there must be a radical political change in the country, but for any radical change to happen, there should also be a radical change within each individual American. In Steinbeck’s novel, there were many characters that underwent changes throughout the story. However, the character that underwent the most radical change was Rose of Sharon, who, after suffering from the loss of her own child, has agreed to nurse an old man. â€Å"Then she lay down beside him. He shook his head slowly from side to side. Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast† (Steinbeck, 619). This last scene in Steinbeck’s novel often elicits a violent reaction from readers. But, upon reflection, it was the most humane act of all. The violent reaction occurred simply because many readers are trapped within the bounds of society’s conventions. Without these conventions, the readers will be rid of preconceptions that prevent them from reaching out to other people. Without preconceptions, the division between the poor and the rich would eventually disappear. In Baldwin’s essays, the personal change that he wanted to obtain is to prevent the self from following the tides of anger that will sweep and destroy the country. Thus, instead of wearing the easy cloak called Negro writer, he chose to create a new one, the American writer. He found that the American writers of his time lack the sense of purpose that a literary artist should have. This is because the American writer, similar to the many readers of Steinbeck, is trapped by conventions of society. Baldwin believes that unless the American writer â€Å"is released from the habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a regular guy that he realizes how crippling this habit has been† (Baldwin, 6). If all Americans will remove the concept of race from their minds, they will find that there is no Negro problem after all. The concept of effecting an individual change prior to achieving a wider social change evolved primarily from the personal experiences of the authors and from their observations. These were distilled to create the plot of the novel and the subject of the essays. As influential authors, were Steinbeck and Baldwin ethically appropriate in creating literary works that came from their personal experiences and personal political beliefs? The answer is an affirmative. The literary artist must take his own personal history, distill truth from his experiences, and use his insights responsibly by sending a political and social message to the rest of the world.

Convention and Realism in Henry James’ Washington Square Essay

Convention and Realism in Henry James’ Washington Square Realism, as described by William Dean Howells in the late nineteenth century, replaces the high art and style of the literature of the preceding decades by permitting such characters as Howells' Silas Lapham to have a distinct place in the pantheon of American literary characters. Fervently, Howells invoked the "truth" of the realist genre, writing, "ŒLet it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know...let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans know - the language of unaffected people everywhere'" (Fictions of the Real, 188). This impassioned phrase, apparently invoking the importance of characters such as Silas Lapham, indicates the emergence of a gritty language, an "unaffected" dialect. Such a marker for realism connotes not the stories of Howell or James, but rather the coarse, common language of the masses as found in the pages of Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Howells' call for realism encompasses such literary giants as Henry James, but does not necessarily describe them. Both Howells and James, though utterly invested in "the motives and passions" of the human race, still rely and stylistic and social conventions in their novels. James, most especially, combines high art and society with a new conception of realism - one that removes the mask from the self-proclaimed moralism of the upper classes and demonstrates their hopes and failures in the very light of truth-telling fiction. While Howells' realism was "romantic" in that he permitted "respectability to censor his observations and insights" (Trachtenberg, 191) and allowed his characters to fall into the miasma of what he believed to ... ...mes, 39). James, rather than resorting to the later bitter, gritty realist tactics of Drieser, stays enmeshed in the conventions of society while experimenting with realist conceptions of character. Though the novel caters to the "good taste of the gentlefolk" (Trachtenberg, 182) through its nod to societal norms and customs, James' characters, most especially Catherine Sloper, indicate the emergence of a new reality of "an authentic and original being" (Bell, 38) - a being of lost hopes with the ragged edges of "truth uncompromisingly told." Works Cited Millicent Bell, "Style as Subject Washington Square," in Sewanee Review (vol. 83, 1985). Henry James, Washington Square (London: Penguin Classics, 1986). Alan Trachtenberg, "Fictions of the Real," in The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).

Comment and Compare the Boscastle and Pakistan Floods Essay

During the 2010 monsoon season (July and August), Pakistan experienced the worst floods recorded in its history. Heavy rainfall caused flash floods in the north and north-western regions of the country. The subsequent run-off created a southward moving mass of water approximately the size of the United Kingdom. The flood waters travelled downstream through Punjab and Sindh until they reached the Arabian Sea. Many of the main tributaries feeding into the Indus River were also flooded, further inundating agricultural lands. In total, some 20 million people were displaced and 50,000 square km were submerged, while standing crops, infrastructure and land were damaged extensively. The extent of the destruction caused by the 2010 floods is hard to comprehend. The floods impacted seventy-eight districts, resulting in the deaths of over 1900 people with at least another 2900 injured. In the areas receiving flood-waters 70% of the roads and bridges were swept away. More than 10,000 schools and 500 hospitals were destroyed or damaged, as were about 1.6 million homes. In a relatively short period of time, millions of Pakistanis who were already having a difficult time making a living before the floods found themselves homeless and unsure of how to survive. The losses were largest for crops with direct damage to 2.1 million hectares of standing Kharif crops (crops that are sown in the rainy season) – mainly cotton, rice, sugarcane and vegetables; one million tonnes of food and seed stocks were lost along with a large number of on-farm water channels and wells. Livestock were decimated during the flash floods in the hilly areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while grazing animals and poultry were also lost in the plains area. In all, approximately 200,000 livestock (including cows, sheep, buffalo, goats and donkeys) were initially confirmed dead, with the total rising somewhat over time. Of immediate concern was the increased risk of outbreaks of contagious diseases due to unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and personal hygiene, food insecurity,lack of shelter, overcrowding and decreased access to health care. In late August 2010, over 450,000 cases of dysentery and other diseases were reported, and some 3.5 million children were considered at risk of contracting water-borne diseases including diarrhoea and cholera. Three rivers – the Valency, Jordan and Paradise – converge on the small, tourist village of Boscastle on the Cornish coast. The majority of the damage caused by the flash flood on 16th August 2004, 52 years after the catastrophe that was the Lynmouth flood, was attributable to the Valency. In total, an input of 3 million tonnes of water was added to a tiny drainage basin, whose size was just 40 square kilometres. Attention must be paid not just to the total volume of rain but also the intensity with which it fell. 185mm arrived in just five hours, the majority falling in the first two hours. Under such conditions, infiltration was virtually impossible, with the rate of precipitation greatly exceeding the infiltration capacity of any soil type. The soils were already saturated from previous rainfall earlier in the week, encouraging surface run-off to begin even sooner. The three river valleys are very steep and narrow; a broader floodplain would have helped to soak up ex cess water and to reduce energy more effectively through an increased hydraulic radius. The settlement of Boscastle was allowed to develop on a narrow flood plain on the west coast of England, where rainfall is often high. The rainfall of August 2004 hit at the worst time of year, when the settlement population doubled to 2,000 as tourists arrived. Much higher levels of motor vehicle damage were also experienced as a result of this temporary population increase. In addition, shops were carrying greater levels of stock than at other times of the year. Although new flood defences were set to be built in October of that year, work had not yet started. Overall, excellent emergency services and Environment Agency response meant no lives were lost. However, due to the constantly changing nature of the tourist population, it took a long time to clearly establish that there had been no fatalities. Most shops stayed shut for the rest of the season and the bad publicity reduced tourist numbers during the following years, resulting in a negative multiplier effect for the entire lo cal community. In addition, the effect spread beyond Boscastle – other settlements along the river were perceived to be at risk by tourists. Boscastle businesses could claim compensation from their insurance companies (claims for ‘disruption to trading’ in Boscastle amounted to  £15m). However, others businesses elsewhere in Cornwall could not, even though they too may have suffered reduced trade in the following years. This became a cause for concern, with tourism accounting for 30% of Cornwall’s GDP and tourists spending up to  £1 billion throughout the county. Shared amenities such as Boscastle village green were now covered with silt and up-ended cars. There were serious costs for a small community with a seasonal employment problem, due to its over-reliance on summer tourism. There was also irreplaceable loss of historical artefacts; The ‘Witch Museum’ – which was fifty years old and received 50,000 visitors a year – saw some of its unique contents damaged. Infrastructure disruption was another major problem; both bridges in Boscastle were destroyed and sections of r oad swept away. Telephone, water, electricity and gas supplies were all immediately interrupted. People found the value of their homes permanently reduced, now that Boscastle was associated with a serious flood risk. It has been suggested that values were halved. In some instances it took six months before properties were sufficiently repaired for homeowners to permanently return. This was one of the worst problems that flood victims faced: they could not physically return to their homes even when the floodwaters receded. In some cases, the historic character of the houses in Boscastle caused extra problems. Six properties were destroyed outright; most others required between  £15,000 and  £30,000 for repairs. Insurance companies reimbursed most people however some home and car owners did not receive compensation because (a) they lacked appropriate insurance cover or (b) they found that they were not entitled to payment because insurers regarded this unusual event as an ‘Act of God’. It is difficult to compare these two floods, which both caused significant damage, but the scale to which this happened varied tremendously; one occurred in a small, sleepy Cornish village while the other tormented a whole country. The numbers involved also differed; there were thankfully no deaths in the Boscastle flood (one resident suffered a heart attack but that was the extent of the casualties), whereas there were over 1500 people killed in Pakistan with millions more left homeless and in danger of starvation and waterborne diseases. The cost of the clean up for a small village like Boscastle was great enough; that for the already heavily indebted, poverty-stricken Pakistan was impossibly high. The greatest similarity is the physical geography of the land which didn’t allow for adequate drainage of the affected areas. Pakistan is essentially split down the middle with the western side of the country all at least 300m above sea level whereas the eastern half is low lying farmland/floodplains. This meant that the excess surface runoff caused by the high levels of rainfall simply followed the gradient of the land and flooded the lower lying east. Boscastle is in an even worse position as it is sitting at the bottom of a valley so the water came from both sides, converging at the village where the already swollen rivers simultaneously burst their banks. Another similarity was the high levels of rainfall immediately preceeding the floods which meant that the subsequent rainfall was unable to infiltrate the already saturated ground.

Pros and Cons of Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles

The jury is still out on whether hydrogen will ultimately be our environmental savior, replacing the fossil fuels responsible for global warming and various nagging forms of pollution. Two main hurdles stand in the way of mass production and widespread consumer adoption of hydrogen â€Å"fuel-cell† vehicles: the still high cost of producing fuel cells; and the lack of a hydrogen refueling network. The High Cost of Building Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles Reining in manufacturing costs of fuel-cell vehicles is the first major issue the automakers are addressing. Several had  fuel-cell prototype vehicles on the road, sometimes even leasing them to the public, but they were spending upwards of $1 million to produce each one due to the advanced technology involved and low production runs. Toyota reduced its costs per fuel-cell vehicle and as of 2015 sells its Mirai model for close to $60,000 in the United States. The Honda FCX Clarity is available only in southern California. Other manufacturers have been investing in developing mass-market models as well.   Still Too Few Places to Refuel Another problem is the lack of hydrogen refueling stations. Major oil companies have been loathe to set up hydrogen tanks at existing gas stations for many reasons, ranging from safety to cost to lack of demand. But obviously the oil companies are also trying to keep customers interested in their highly profitable bread-and-butter product: gasoline. A more likely scenario is what is emerging in California, where a few dozen  independent hydrogen fuel stations are located around the state as part of a network created by the nonprofit California Fuel Cell Partnership, a consortium of automakers, state and federal agencies, and other parties interested in furthering hydrogen fuel-cell technologies. The Benefits of Hydrogen Over Fossil Fuels The benefits of ditching fossil fuels for hydrogen are many, of course. Burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil to heat and cool our buildings and run our vehicles takes a heavy toll on the environment, contributing significantly to both local problems such as elevated particulate levels and global ones such as a warming climate. The only by-product of running a hydrogen-powered fuel cell is oxygen and a trickle of water, neither of which will cause any harm to human health or the environment. Hydrogen Is Still Closely Tied to Fossil Fuels But right now, a large percentage of the hydrogen available in the United States is either extracted from fossil fuels or made using electrolytic processes powered by fossil fuels, thus negating any real emissions savings or reduction in fossil-fuel usage. Only if renewable energy sources—solar, wind, and others—can be harnessed to provide the energy to process hydrogen fuel can the dream of a truly clean hydrogen fuel be realized. Renewable Energy the Key to Clean Hydrogen Fuel Stanford University researchers in 2005 assessed the environmental effects of three different hydrogen sources: coal, natural gas, and water electrolysis powered by wind. They concluded that we would lower greenhouse gas emissions more by driving gasoline/electric hybrid cars than by driving fuel-cell cars run on hydrogen from coal. Hydrogen made using natural gas would fare a little bit better in terms of pollution output, while making it from wind power would be a slam-dunk for the environment.