The Grapes of Wrath: Tender Narrator in Action (original) (raw)

Since their first publication in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s unquestionably greatest novel, have been translated into at least forty five languages and sold in over fourteen million copies worldwide. Written at a staggering speed in eight months with the first draft under the title L’Affaire Lettuceberg destroyed by the author as not enough, The Grapes were the last in a triptych of novels about California’s migrant workers, the other two being In Dubious Battle (1936) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The tragic plight of migrant work force and their families remained at the time the focus of Steinbeck’s tender attention. In my presentation, I argue that the novel’s unwavering status and popularity among readers is in no small part due to the structure of its complex narration: the masterful employment of detail and narrow perspective that spans out to direct the reader towards vast conclusions and a wide picture of how the westering pattern created America. Furthermore, my aim is to demonstrate that Steinbeck’s method can successfully be analyzed through Olga Tokarczuk’s concept of “tender narrator” presented in her Nobel Prize lecture in 2019. The tender narrator is that mode of seeing which incorporates all without bias, which connects scattered fragments of a seemingly disconnected reality into a whole, wherein the world emerges as being alive, living, and composed of interdependent identities that interconnect and impact one another in often not evident ways. My aim is to demonstrate that Steinbeck’s tender narrative tactics created the masterpiece whose voice and message still resonate in the world today.

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