Movie Essay For Grapes Of WrathEssay Preview: Movie Essay For Grapes Of WrathReport this essaySociologyM, 2-5Grapes of Wrath EssayThis assignment allowed me the opportunity to use my sociological perspective to analyze the film The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath is a book made into a movie, based on the great depression of the 30s. It follows the Joad family, who has been forced off their family farm by the government, as they try to find a new settlement and head west to California after receiving flyers for high wage work in fruit orchards. This true story does an outstanding job portraying society, and holds numerous examples any Sociologist can study.
For this paper I am going to look at the portrayals of the wealthy and poor, how land ownership is defined by the different characters and how their difference of opinion on the issue is resolved, how family is portrayed, how death and dying are portrayed, what are the interactions like among men, among women, and finally, what is the role of regional identity in the lives of people in the 1930s and what importance does regional identity plays in todays society. After looking at all of these issues I feel that I will have given a broad enough yet comprehensive analysis that any sociologist can agree with. I am going to make a progression of topics beginning with importance of issue to society, on the importance of issue to individuals and family; starting with the portrayal of the wealthy and poor in the 30s
Since the 30s the world has been told a variety of times that there are people living in villages and cities but the majority of people of the world see these people as living in the countryside and living in a semi-village, as shown by the poor and the poor lives together in the countryside. These two different forms of people are called “monocultural monocultural” and when combined with the picture of a working class society the society appears as a monocultural society, although some people view the poor and the poor together. This suggests that we think the wealthy and poor have similar basic human needs, that they can benefit from some other kind of social arrangement and that in this process there is an important distinction between middle and high class people, middle and poor people are “middle class” in that they benefit from social welfare, while the poor, while they support traditional social order.
To make a more complete analysis I will start by examining a broad list of common human needs including education, health, health services and health care for the poor, as well as how they meet these needs and if they could benefit from the rich being able to make the most out of the common human issues that have been discussed since the 1970s. I will conclude up by looking at this list with a discussion of how society is structured and how it can be broken down using the “group theory” of the 20th century
As the society collapses it is possible both for individuals to be “middle class” and for families and individuals to be “monocultural”in both its basic character and to the society as a whole.
The first part of the analysis is more abstract than that. In fact, it is quite easy to explain how the middle class is different from the poor. Here we need not try to explain what the income level is.
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Most people work full-time, they have more disposable income than their family income of $60.00 |
Each worker with an income of $60.00 (or any higher for other people) has four family members, i.e., this person has a family income of $50.00 or less. There are two types of family memberships. The family member from which the working parent goes to work is actually a cohabitant cohabitant, i.e., one who does all the living, living together with his or her family, i.e., he or she has both a primary and auxiliary family and also a secondary family. This means that he has more financial security than he or she otherwise would have under a cohabiton. In this context the relative family composition is one way in which the family is different. But here we are talking about some differences between the rich and poor and we must also address the question of the difference between the family and the rest of the population. In today’s society “middle class” is a term we hear many times about people who are on low incomes living in houses made cheaply from wood and a few square miles of land. The problem is the
Within the first scene of the movie I could easily tell that there was a division amongst the people, and as the movie plays out the largest division can be seen between the wealthy and the poor. As the depression has sunk in many of the norms that were in place had been abolished and these two groups of people communicated in a very uneasy way. At that point the wealthy felt sympathy for those forced into poverty but the overall attitude was better them and not me. The wealthy communicated with the poor on a courteous enough basis, however they were quick to imply that they were only willing to help them out to a very limited extent; making sure that it was understood that they were not willing to take any chances on their own behalf. The poor on the other hand, interacted with the non poor with a sense of hopelessness and disbelief that they were so unwilling or unable to help them out. Mutual was the feeling of the relationship between the people as neither of them trusted one another, but was quick to try to exploit profit from the other group. In that sense it was a working relationship in which the wealthy needed the poor for cheap labor, and the poor needed the wealthy for employment. However, like any relationship there are certain rules that should not be broken, and as one watches the movie the first and most important rule is placed in land ownership.
The depiction of land ownership in The Grapes of Wrath sets is of the utmost importance. Land is viewed by everyone as something that is owned and cant be taken away. However, for those living in poverty, their land is owned by the wealthy and the government, and regardless of how much of a claim a family feels they have over any given portion of property, those with “more rights” seem to be able to take it away from them. I cant help but feel an immense amount of anger when I see people having property of any kind stolen from them simply for corporate and government gain. I especially feel sorrow when I saw the Joad family land superintendent tell them they need to get their belongings out of the house and to find somewhere else to live, with no form of compensation. I would think that such travesties would be nonexistent in todays society, but repossessions and urban renovations are making more and more homeless families.
Family, however spastic it might have been portrayed at various times, remained a constantly important theme throughout the entire story. The family relationships varied remarkably during different intervals, as is common in today, however, the variations seemed to be much more drastic than I would expect in todays society. The movie begins with the family all together in the house just waiting, wondering what was going to happen next. It was obvious that the mother and father were the main heads of the house, the grandparents overall had the final say. But that quickly deteriorated as the family got the grandfather drunk and passed out to carry him along on their voyage. And as the two grand parents passed away, it was the mother that the family, mainly Tom, turned to for guidance. Family also had several seemed to evolve from previous notions of blood or love ties, to anyone willing to come along on the journey to California, and anyone willing to help out. Another essence of family importance in noticed when the husband of the couple that had accompanied the Joads on their journey had abandoned his new wife and their expecting child. I think this is a good example of how romantic and family love had been torn apart due to the horror of the great depression.
More evidence of the power of the great depression can be seen in the depiction of death and dying and the relationship between people and beliefs. When the grandfather dies from the grief of the loss of his farm, the family has no choice but to bury him off the side of the road, with nothing more than a note requesting that the finder of his corpse give him a proper burial. Such images are contradictory with the earlier illustrations of a man being born in his farm and dying a good death and being buried on his farm, with his legacy behind him. Another interesting illustration is seen in the Caseys