Archetype Paper
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Archetype paper
The Grapes of Wrath, shows the archetype “Nature vs Mechanistic” throughout the novel. It does this by drawing a line between aspects of nature and the humans world of the machines that they have created to separate them selves from nature.
The archetype I mentioned has certain characteristics. One of which being that the novel has a defined line to separate nature and the machine world. It does this to create a distinction between the humans and nature. Humans were once part of nature, and followed by its simple laws. Over time man grew detached from nature. Wanting to overpower or become the superior. They do this by creating the mechanistic world, although their attempt too overpower it are somewhat sucessful. An attribute of this archetype is to also show that nature always prevails. Nature is also known to work in cycles, novels with these archetypes usually show these cycles in the chapters.
The family at the start of the book is giving up its farm to move to a new location. Their goal is to find work, and jobs too pay for the family. Past generations of the family have always been farmers, they will transition from being nature oriented too more adapted to a machine world. At the beginning of chapter two the family gets their truck. This initiates the mechanistic world. The author uses diction that emphasizes a dull, and metalic world. “Steel-blue smoke,double tires,big black doors,”(5 Steinback) Are all examples of the authors syntax for the mechanistic world. This is the transition from basic to complex machinary.Steinback describes nature with more positive diction,”The sun was as red as ripe new blood,ass dat dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth”.(3 Steinback). Even at just the beginning of the novel there is a obvious distinction between nature and machines.
In chapter 3 at the incident of the turtle, “And now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink..Little by little the shell pulled over”. Later in Chapter 14, a dog is hit and slaughtered due to a car crash,”Rose of Sharon screamed. The dog helplessly, and with a shriek, cut off in the middle, went under the wheels.” The transformation from the turtle prevailing and the dog dying represents the cycles of nature. It shows how events repeat but in different ways. Later during the end of the novel, the archaetype is shown by the flood. Prevailing and conquering. This is once again part of the cycle, back and forth between man and nature.
Present day, a path some people choose to follow is “non-materialistic”, these simply means that the person chooses too not depend on technologies and sythetics