Steinbeck

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Steinbeck 's Regionalism

John Steinbeck 's contribution to American literature is cemented in the works of East of Eden , The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row . His use of regionalism and his simplistic characters with everyday problems has gained him the reputation of one of the greatest in American history . The following essay will give examples of Steinbeck 's writing why it is important and the element of regionalism will be addressed as one of the most important concepts in Steinbeck

's writing

One element with which Steinbeck writes with great emphasis is hope The family Joads in The Grapes of Wrath epitomize this lack of hope in some of the family members and in the other family members epitomize a plethora of hope as they make their way west to new land and new lives This element of hope in the novel leads to regionalism as Steinbeck writes a lot about the American landscape as the family forges their way westward . The land itself seems to be an extension of the characters emotions for at certain points in the novel when a family member dies or leaves or the Joads are feeling especially downtrodden , the landscape echoes those emotions as Steinbeck writes about draught or dust or lack of vegetation or room (as the family comes closer to California and the land is overwhelmed with the homeless

Another important structuring device for Steinbeck , as many critics have suggested , is the quest or journey . These quests are often directed toward some obsessive ideal which turns out , ironically , to have been a misleading or impossible goal . The Arthurian legends , the Quixotic escapades , the expulsion from Eden , the Okies ' migration , the opening of the American West : these and many other journeys found their way into Steinbeck 's fiction as apt means to provide overall structure for the narratives (Pugh 72-73

The characters throughout Steinbeck 's works may either accept a hopeless state and be transformed from it , or accept hope as a gift despite the fact that reality and circumstances may deny them their desires (as is the case in examining the book in a regionalism aspect (Bracher 281 The theme for Cannery Row extends to this idea of hope and regionalism Steinbeck 's Cannery Row introduces the reader to Mack and the boys . In the cannery district known as Monterey California are vagabonds , urchins or general destitute people . The object of the novel centers mainly around the boys getting Doc something nice , or doing something nice for him since he is the general care -taker of cannery row (albeit Steinbeck does not only focus on this story but introduces subplots in vignettes in which the theme is central to violence , destitution , and despondency towards the state of life in Cannery Row . Thus , regionalism as expressed in Cannery Row is expressive of destitution

Extensible forms , it could be argued , allow a controlled but more arbitrary narrative sequencing , which could be called non-teleological in...