The Grapes of Wrath Personification Quotes

In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1. Here Steinbeck plays the role of an artist painting a picture of the devastation caused to the land and crops by the drought. He uses detailed imagery and dark, descriptive language to express a sense of hopelessness and a land at war with natural events. The ears of corn are "green bayonets," clouds give up trying to appear as the sky grows paler, distressed weeds try to "protect themselves." Steinbeck uses personification to give human characteristics to lifeless objects like the clouds and weeds. Color imagery conveys how the life’s blood is draining the Oklahoma earth, as it crusts and turns pale, the red country now pink and the gray country white. It’s as if the land, the other central character after the Joad family, is dying a slow death.

A gentle wind followed the rain clouds, driving them on northward, a wind that softly clashed the drying corn. A day went by and the wind increased, steady, unbroken by gusts. The dust from the roads fluffed up and spread out and fell on the weeds beside the fields, and fell into the fields a little way. Now the wind grew strong and hard and it worked at the rain crust in the corn fields. Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. The wind grew stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields and drove gray plumes into the air like sluggish smoke. The corn threshed the wind and made a dry, rushing sound. The finest dust did not settle back to earth now, but disappeared into the darkening sky.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1. This passage describes how the wind takes up the dust and and spreads it across the land of Oklahoma. Steinbeck’s rich descriptive powers manage to immerse completely the reader in the devastation of the Dust Bowl. Personification makes the scene more vivid by inviting us to imagine the wind as a living being wreaking havoc on the earth. Color imagery describing the "gray plumes" of dust and the darkening sky paint a picture of natural ruin and diminishing hope.

During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1. From the get-go, Steinbeck uses personification to make his story more vivid and engaging to the reader. He stretches the boundaries of reality by giving the wind and the corn human characteristics. Thus the wind is cunning and the corn fights the wind. This adds dramatic effect to the description of the weather.

The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1. Here the wind is personified as it cries and whimpers over the ruined corn. This helps the reader visualize the farming families lamenting the loss of their crops and livelihoods. We also have the theme of false hope, as color imagery describes the appearance of a red sun, only to have much of its light blocked out by a gray sky caused by the dust storms.

She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 3. A woman sedan driver shows her humanity when she spares the turtle’s life by swinging to the right off the highway to avoid hitting it. The car is personified here – "the wheels screamed." It should also be pointed out that the woman’s kindness is in stark contrast to the male driver who soon after tries to run down the turtle. Vulnerable migrants like the Joads will also meet compassionate people on their epic journey west to California, as foreshadowed by this passage.

If a bank or finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Steinbeck uses a metaphor to compare the banks to monsters in their relentless drive for wealth. He sees them as evil and inhuman entities feeding on the labor, misery and misfortunes of tenant farmers. The bank is also personified here, as it is given human attributes – "needs – wants – insists."

In the little houses the tenant people sifted their belongings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers. Picked over their possessions for the journey to the West. The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 9. In preparation for the migration west, the tenant farmers sift through their belongings to decide what to disgard or bring with them on the journey. They know that the past is dead and they must move on. But the women on the other hand know the past will come back to haunt them. Steinbeck personifies the past by giving it the human ability to cry.

You’re not buying only junk, you’re buying junked lives. And more – you’ll see – you’re buying bitterness. Buying a plow to plow your own children under, buying the arms and spirits that might have saved you. Five dollars, not four. I can’t haul them back – Well, take ’em for four. But I warn you, you’re buying what will plow your own children under…You’re buying a little girl plaiting the forelocks, taking off her hair ribbon to make bows, standing back, head cocked, rubbing the soft noses with her cheek. 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 and the bay horses – so beautiful – a packet of bitterness to grow in your house and to flower, some day. We could have saved you, but you cut us down, and soon you will be cut down and there’ll be none of us to save you.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 9. This expresses the bitterness of tenant farmers forced to sell their farm tools and belongings, and what they believe will happen to the people who purchase them. They tell profiteering junk dealers who take advantage of their need by paying the least money possible, that they are buying the bitterness of people’s ruined lives. Bitterness is used here as a metaphor. Steinbeck also personifies the tools and belongings the dispossessed farmers are forced to sell. The loss of dignity they experience comes across strongly in this chapter and passage.

Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 11. As the dispossessed stream out of the drought-stricken Dust Bowl states, the tenant farmers’ houses are vacant and lifeless. The only life remaining in the area is the gleaming metal sheds that house the tractors. Steinbeck personifies the tractor, with machines now controlling the land instead of people. Instead of blood coursing through veins, gasoline and oil bring life to the tractor.

In the grassy lot the wrecks lay, cars with twisted, stove-in noses, wounded cars lying on their sides with the wheels gone. Engines rusting on the ground and against the shed. A great pile of junk; fenders and truck sides, wheels and axles; over the whole lot a spirit of decay, of mold and rust; twisted iron, half-gutted engines, a mass of derelicts.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 16. Steinbeck uses personification, when he describes a vehicle graveyard and gives human characteristics to the cars.

The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide…This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner. This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries, too.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25. Steinbeck makes effective use of simile ("like the tide") and personification ("debt creep up…will have choked") to describe the inhumanity of industrialized farming. The small fruit farmer, weighed down by bank debt, is swallowed up by the big farmer, who also happens to own the cannery too.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25. The chapter’s final words are Biblical in tone expressing almost a sentiment of doom. The last sentence references the song <em>Battle Hymn of the Republic</em> written by Julia Howe shortly before the American Civil War. The novel’s title is taken from a line of the song: "Mine eyes hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on." The "grapes of wrath" metaphor is also an allusion to Revelations 14:19 where evil people perish: "And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine press, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs." A number of themes are in play in this important passage from the novel. They include the inhumanity of the large farmers, their greed, the anger of the people and the hunger that drives that anger. Steinbeck warns of the rising wrath of people left to starve in a California rich with food destroyed because harvesting isn’t profitable enough. There is foreshadowing of a rebellion by the people against this cruel system. Personification is used by the author in his depiction of the pigs "screaming."
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