In The Beast we learned the story of various migrant women who are now working in bars and brothels in Southern Mexico. They work as bartenders, exotic dancers and prostitutes. They even entice younger women to join in what they call "the Trade."
What do their stories tell us about the role of gender and race in migration? About consent, coercion and exploitation? About human trafficking? About the society that tolerates this "Trade"?
In The Beast we encounter a society dominated by the Zetas, a powerful organized crime synidcate. According to an uncover agent, "[W]however wants a job, any kind of job has to work for the Zetas. They control everything, every institution"(117).
How does this level of organized crime impact the migrant's experience? How does it affect society? Howis similar or different from the corruption in police and business in the Grapes of Wrath?
In Grapes of Wrath we saw tractors destroy homes and fields and gerry-rigged trucks as delivery to a promised land. Now in The Beast we have trains that can both quickly transport migrants but also can kill and maim as well as trap them to be robbed or kidnapped.
What is the Beast telling us about technology and machines? Good, bad or a little of both?
The novel ends with an epic flood, almost Biblical in proportion, that forces Ma and Pa -- with Rose of Sharon, Ruthie and Winfield in tow -- to find higher ground. In part they are spurred on to aid Rose of Sharon's health as she has just lost her baby and is still feeling unwell, both physically and emotionally. They seek shelter in a barn, only to encounter a boy and his father, who is dying of hunger and can no longer digest solid food. The novel ends when Rose of Sharon
loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. "You got to," she said. "there." Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across hte barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously (455).
What is the significance of this gesture and the image this scene is describing?
Tom Joad, the moral center of the The Grapes of Wrath, abruptly exits the novel in chapter 28. In order to escape possible arrest and to save his family from the effects of his problems, he decides (with the approval of Ma) to do the unthinkable: leave the family. In his conversation with Ma he gives his famous speech which can be interpreted as a moment of spiritual insight, a gesture of solidarity or a call to action. He says (in part), "I'll be ever'where-- wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Where they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there"(419). While not the end of the novel, it is arguably the ending of its most important story arc.
What is the significance of this gesture and the image this scene is describing?
Grapes of Wrath is a litmus test for social and political instutions of Depression Era America. The novel portrays business owners and workers, police and strikers, govenrment official and ordinary Americans. What does the novel tell us about various social and political instutions like the government, the police, landowners, unions, religion, and ordinary Americans?
The Joad family begin an epic journey with dreams and hopes. Grandpa, for one, imagines a life of ease picking grapes and eating all the fruit he wants. Rose of Sharon and Connie imagine a successful career as a radio operator with a new house for the new baby and ice. Yet, along the way they learn harsh truths about their new reality from the cost of labor, discrimination, and suffering endemic to the human condition.
