Sunday, August 22, 2010

Courage and Faith in Grapes of Wrath

Two lessons that can be thoroughly taught by the tenant farmers in Grapes of Wrath are courage and faith. During the beginnign of the novel the reader is under the impression that all of their faith is foolishness. Time and time again th epeople who were in the position to help them out or do them a kind turn instead insisted on doing the opposite and using their compromised position for their own gain. For a while the reader remained hopeless and slowly lost faith in the goodness of human kind.

But when all hope is lost, the author insterts a small seed of hope in the darkness. The story is told that there was one poor family who did not have the money to buy a car to drive them all the way to California. Instead, they took all that they had and crafted a makshift trailer and placed it on the side of the raod on route 66, hoping and praying that some kind soul would come along adn help them out. Sure enough, as unlikely as it is, a sedan cam ealong and picked up taht family and hitched their trailer to their own car and pulled that entire family of ten all the way to California. Not only did they pull them, but they fed them on the journey as well. They truly were a miracle for that faithful family. It almost seems to be a game of luck whether or not these desperate families will make it to California against all odds. As a quote from the book said, "the people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever."

But whether or not any of these people received such an amazing blessign as the one above, these people all exhibited amazing courage leaving behind the only land that they knew to begin the rough journey to finding a new life.

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