 |
The Oklahoma Manual of Style
Typically, tone is described as the attitude of the author towards what he or she is writing. Unlike many other aspects of writing that can be concretely identified, tone must be deduced through analysis of the stylistic methods the author employs to communicate the message of the work. Of course, a hefty work of literature such as John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath does not contain a single tone all the way through, but the tone of each passage is usually consistent. The tone throughout Chapter Nine (pgs. 117-121) of this novel is one of both bitterness and nostalgia.
Particular words utilized by Steinbeck help to convey the bitter feelings of the tenant farmers who are forced to leave their entire lives behind. Throughout the passage, such words are interspersed as “spoiled,” “junk,” “toil,” “hurts,” and “scuffed”. These strongly connotative words suggest images of exhaustion and worthlessness. By emphasizing the total wearing out of the farmers and their possessions, Steinbeck demonstrates the fatigued end of their entire lives up to this point. The passage also contains such diction as “belongings,” “possessions,” “goods,” and “things.” Many different words are used to describe the property of the families to create different perspectives on the items. When described as belongings or possessions, items are highly personal and hard to abandon, but they must be turned into only totally dispassionate goods and things and left behind forever.
Imagery in the passage illustrates the sad reminiscence and lack of hope for the future felt by the families combined with anger toward the buyers: “You’re buying years of work, toil in the sun; you’re buying a sorrow that can’t talk. But watch it, mister. There’s a premium goes with this pile of junk… a packet of bitterness to grow in your house and to flower, some day”(118). The farmers feel that in selling their belongings, they are giving up not only material possessions but also important memories. The farmers’ only recompense is a gloomy revenge that germinates in the hope of making the real or imagined culprits suffer along with them. Other images are representative of the families’ desperate clinging to the past: “How if you wake up in the night and know-- and know the willow tree’s not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can’t. The willow tree is you” (120-121). The families feel they cannot ever start again, and thus, in being forced to abandon their former lives, their self-existence is over as well.
Steinbeck’s usage of the third-person omniscient point of view combined with first-hand knowledge of individual feelings quickly enlightens the reader as to how the families are dealing with their situation: “...the women sat among them, turning over and looking off beyond and back, pictures, square glasses, and here’s a vase” (119). By starting off with typical third-person narration and suddenly switching to unmarked dialogue, Steinbeck quickly brings the reader out of vague detachment into the private conversations of the tenant farmers. The quick jump also emphasizes the hurriedness with which they are forced to try to adapt. The same technique is used later: “Suddenly they were nervous. Got to get out quick now” (121). The fast switch the families must make is further stressed, this time more obviously since the content of the quotation deals with it directly. The usage of differing points of view also gives the passage a more stream-of-consciousness presentation of events and feelings without being overly concerned with formality of writing.
Less explicit than the other stylistic elements, the structural format also lends meaning to the passage as a whole. Much in the way the entire novel alternates between general intercalary chapters and specific character chapters, Chapter Nine alternates between narrative paragraphs and dialogue paragraphs. As in the uses of points of view, this organization is intended to switch the focus from impersonal events to their impact on people. The effect on the reader is, at least in theory, a shift from indifference toward the scene to emotional involvement with the characters and situations described. The passage also sharply divides its many long paragraphs with single sentences of pithy descriptions of occurrences. Within the writing, this structure is utilized to signify a prompt change in topic. As for the reader, it is designed as a sort of pulling back to reality and push in another direction-- in this case, an abrupt switch from rancor in the present to fleeting comfort in the past.
The bitter and nostalgic tone of the entire passage, dealing with the angry and hurried casting away of valuable memories, fits into the novel’s overall negative theme of loss and disintegration. The slow degeneration of lives in the form of losing friends, lifestyles, possessions, or nearly anything else comprises the first budding of the grapes whose harvest signifies revolution.
|
 |
