/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22657724]

>Sheltered upper class Californiacuck writes a book about how corporations are Le Bad and poor white farmers are Le Good

[Anonymous No.22657734]

ok?

[Anonymous No.22657760]

>>22657724
>sheltered leftist liberal with a humanities degree working in retail makes a thread about working class Le BAD corporations Le GOOD

[Anonymous No.22657763]

>>22657760
Nooo you can’t just heckin innovate!!! We all need to be subsistence farmerinos!!!

[Anonymous No.22657775]

>>22657763
>industrially-produced ZOGslop is innovation

[Anonymous No.22657787]

>>22657775
> Mechanized farm equipment doesn’t count as innovation because… because… it just doesn’t, okay

[Anonymous No.22657821]

>>22657763
>Nooo you can’t just heckin innovate
It's a plot point in the novel that Joads would all accept any work in Oklahoma in any capacity, and don't mind automation by itself - they drive to california in a Hudson truck, a very new and technologically advanced mode of transportation at the time. But the company won't have them. And the company not wanting them is not an expression of progress either, as after the Dust Bowl Oklahoma government and local companies would have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on resettlement of the affected lands so that they have the work force to even start restoring the arable land through the hay method.

>We all need to be subsistence farmerinos!!!
Joads were not substinence farmers either - they were sharecroppers, meaning that they did not own the land, and had no choice of crops to cultivate - the landwoners' demanding soil overexploitation from excessive cotton cultivation was one of the major causes behind the Dust Bowl in the first place, with Pa Joad and other sharecroppers pointing it out in the novel. Joads were not le hecking trad nuclear family farmers on their own land - they are a family that accepted changes, did what the Powers the Be demanded from them for as long as they can remember, and that does nothing to protect them from being fucked.

What affects Joads in The Grapes of Wrath is not an expression of progress - it's a pump and dump in it's purest form, old as humanity itself.

[Anonymous No.22657841]

>>22657821
What do you expect? If one man on a machine can do the job of 100 farmers, should the government just pay the other 99 farmers to sit on their ass and do nothing? At least in California they were productive

[Anonymous No.22657864]

>>22657841
>If one man on a machine can do the job of 100 farmers
Joads were not replaced by "more automated" agriculture practices. Their crops have failed due to the Dust Bowl and the bank that owned their land has repossessed it. It's noted in the novel that their nighbor who owned a new tractor had to flee (and abandon his expensive machine) due to eviction same as everyone else around him, save for Muley Graves who remains to fight the evictors and die.

>should the government just pay the other 99 farmers to sit on their ass and do nothing
The government then paid 150 farmers to use machines to restore the Dust Bowl'd soil.

>At least in California they were productive
It's a plot point in the novel that they harvest peaches in California only for them to be destroyed by the company to keep the prices high (a historically documented practice at the time), the only purpose behind the harvests being prevention of garden rot from unharvested fruit - which is why the company doesn't pay them sustainable wages for it, which in turn leads to declining demand, which in turn caused the Great Depression.

[Anonymous No.22657867]

A hobo suckin' on Rose-of-Sharon's titties after she stillbriths her kid is seriously based plotting and a great way to end a book

[Anonymous No.22657873]

>>22657841
>If one man on a machine can do the job of 100 farmers
Joads were not replaced by "more automated" agriculture practices. Their crops have failed due to the Dust Bowl and the bank that owned their land has repossessed it. It's noted in the novel that their nighbor who owned a new tractor had to flee (and abandon his expensive machine) due to eviction same as everyone else around him, save for Muley Graves who remains to fight the evictors and die. The book in general avoids the "man vs technology" theme, with Al Joad being a natural tech wiz whose love of cars and machinery helps his family - but ultimately it cannot protect them from what they are going through, because the things that happen to them are callous and wasteful towards progress and technology same as they are towards human life.

>should the government just pay the other 99 farmers to sit on their ass and do nothing
The government then paid 150 farmers to use machines to restore the Dust Bowl'd soil.

>At least in California they were productive
It's a plot point in the novel that they harvest peaches in California only for them to be destroyed by the company to keep the prices high (a historically documented practice at the time), the only purpose behind the harvests being prevention of garden rot from unharvested fruit - which is why the company doesn't pay them sustainable wages for it, which in turn leads to declining demand, which in turn caused the Great Depression.

[Anonymous No.22657952]

>>22657724
Do you think the companies were good and the people bad or what is your point?

[Anonymous No.22658541]

>>22657952
It's 4chan contrarianism. /lit/ is just /b/ or /pol/ but wearing its dad's I'll fitting suit and pretending that reading two pages of a classic makes them an intellectual.

[Anonymous No.22658641]

The bit near the start describing the machinations of the bank and how nobody in the chain really wants to do what they're doing was really great. However I feel like this book sort of runs out of things to say by around the halfway point and devolves into pure miseryporn.

[Anonymous No.22658732]

>>22657724
Thinly veiled seething Latinx thread

[Anonymous No.22658738]

>>22657724
Low tier bait for a Great American Novel.

>>22657867
I was spoiled about the Hobo from the Louis CK joke, but I wept uncontrollably at the stillbirth.

>>22658641
I disagree with the novel as miseryporn. It’s truly one of the comfiest novels I’ve ever read and what makes it so powerful is the Joad Family. They stick together through the entirety of the ups and downs of the novel and it’s a part of the American mythology of “The Great Depression was a very difficult and trying time for everyone in the country, but we got through it by sticking together.”

This book also pairs goes well with The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and even As I Lay Dying. I read them all back to back to back and it makes for a pretty cohesive course on early 20th century American lit.

[Anonymous No.22659115]

>>22657724

Upper class? upper class people don't live in fucking watsonville. OP, this book is a very accurate representation of 1930s California and the problems my parents faced there. You do realize -this is important to know- that the people who sufferred as farmers were all mobilized into factories or military units for the second world war and subsequently became homeowners in new suburban tracts in San Jose and Los Angeles. The story here is far greater when you see the historic context of what the GI Generation went through.

Also, growers are evil yes. They own all the water, refuse to give any even now during the drought. I cannot wait until we can grow food in vats and no longer require the big farms which can be rehabilitated back into nature. There's a balance industrial farming disrupted, especially in coastal california which is isolated and far away from the big cities where all the product is sold. And then look at what happened to the Santa Clara Valley, all of the preexisting culture was totally wiped away by those freeways, subdivisions and computer factories.

[Anonymous No.22659124]

>>22658641

It's hard to discuss areas of California outside of San Jose and Los Angeles without becoming complete miseryporn. I can't even think of one good thing Fresno has ever produced. I don't think Fresno has ever produced a single notable author either.

[Anonymous No.22659186]

>>22659124
FRESNO STATE BULLDOG FOOTBALL

[Anonymous No.22659187]

>>22659124
Victor Davis Hanson

Fowler, CA, That's close enough to Fresno

[Anonymous No.22659209]

>>22659124
Mark Arax