Le roman Grapes Of Wrath de John Steinbeck (document en anglais)

John Steinbeck is an american writer who was born in 1902 and died in 1968. His books often speak about his native California quite as The Grapes of Wrath. This novel was published in 1939 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. It talks about the Joad, a family from Oklahoma, who want to move in California because life in Oklahoma became difficult.
This passage is extracted from the end of the chapter 19 of the novel. At this moment of the story, the Joad arrived in California without the grandparents who died during the journey.

In this extract, the writer used the direct speech. Indeed, a dialogue takes place between several men («In Hooverville the men talking...»). But we notice the absence of marks of dialogue because even if the men are talking, we do not find any quotation marks or dashes. The different sentences are written in the continuation and the narrator returns to the line for each report. Also, we do not know exactly who is talking and with who. And that is why we can confuse the characters and the narrator during this passage.

We notice the word «and» returns simultaneously in certain paragraphs and that it is frequently used in the beginning of sentence. «And» is sometimes written like that «an’», it is to show the bad style of the men. But this word is not really necessary. The narrator uses this polysyndeton to achieve a variety of effects like accelerate or to slow the pace of the text.

This inter-chapter is an other social criticism in this novel about California’s history and the battle between the rich and the poor. Indeed, this passage does not talk about the real history of this book and about the Joad but criticizes California in this period.

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