Writing Assignment #1- The Grapes of Wrath
First--
Watch the following youtube about one man's view of how the story of the Grapes of Wrath is being repeated in the 21st century.
Second--
Watch the youtube excerpt from Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" where he takes a group of US Citizens without healthcare (who also happen to be 9/11 rescue workers)who cannot get treatment in the US to a different kind of "promised land".
Your writing task is a response.....
What do you think about the idea that the Grapes of Wrath is being repeated in the 21st century? What about this idea of people who need help in the US not being able to get it? The theme we are currently studying is the "American Dream", but both of these clips are lacking "dream-like" elements.
Using the first 11 chapters of The Grapes of Wrath, these 2 youtube videos, and your own knowledge and the current situation in the world (based on news sources that you have read/heard) and write a PERSONAL RESPONSE, as if it were a "Letter to the editor". A "letter to the editor" of a major newspaper is PERSONAL, PASSIONATE, and ARTICULATE. You must communicate your opinion about something in a way that others will pay attention to it and hopefully be motivated to ACTION.
Guidelines:
No less than 2 full pages, double spaced
Must have at least 2 text citations from The Grapes of Wrath (noted in the footnotes and on a bibliograpy page)
Must have at least 2 citations from a news source (Danish, American, or others)
Must be written from the 1st person perspective
Must be written in a way that I am moved......
11 February 2010
Leaving Oklahoma
Listen to this song by Chris Knight called "Broken Plow" as it tells the story of the migrant farmer who has been forced to leave his home. How does the song make you feel? What does it make you think of from The Grapes of Wrath as you listen to the lyrics and to the melody?
Load up the old Dodge truck
We’ll leave what we can’t sell
Nobody needs a sharecropper’s tools
or a dust filled well
Take you one last look around
shed you one last tear
For the broken plow, the broken dreams
And the life we’re leaving here
Pull the lines down tight
The kids can ride on top of the load
In the cool of the night
They can crawl underneath the tarp
To stay out of the cold
Eleven hundred miles of mountain and sand
We’ll cross ‘em tired and torn
If this beat up truck can carry us
Far enough away from the storm
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
A man at a roadside station
Don’t like dealing with my kind
He’d beat me out of my last dollar
And never look me in the eye
I heard ‘em call us Okies
Hell I don’t know what that means
But something tells me the promised land
Ain’t as promising as it seems
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
This restless road is full of strangers
They ain’t no stranger than I am
Hardened faces damn the dust and curse the wind
That drove us from this life and home
We’ll never know again
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
Load up the old Dodge truck
We’ll leave what we can’t sell
Nobody needs a sharecropper’s tools
or a dust filled well
Take you one last look around
shed you one last tear
For the broken plow, the broken dreams
And the life we’re leaving here
Pull the lines down tight
The kids can ride on top of the load
In the cool of the night
They can crawl underneath the tarp
To stay out of the cold
Eleven hundred miles of mountain and sand
We’ll cross ‘em tired and torn
If this beat up truck can carry us
Far enough away from the storm
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
A man at a roadside station
Don’t like dealing with my kind
He’d beat me out of my last dollar
And never look me in the eye
I heard ‘em call us Okies
Hell I don’t know what that means
But something tells me the promised land
Ain’t as promising as it seems
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
This restless road is full of strangers
They ain’t no stranger than I am
Hardened faces damn the dust and curse the wind
That drove us from this life and home
We’ll never know again
We’re going to California
There’s work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
Not my life’s blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
08 February 2010
This land is your land...or is it?
Woody Guthrie is known for the songs he wrote about the same time that the Joads and many other families were experiencing what we see in the story.....
Before singing it recently at a concert , Bruce said that he is not sure if this song is true anymore, but that it "oughta be"...
Listen and reflect on the words Woody Guthrie wrote as Springsteen sings....
Do you hear promise? or despair?
Do you hear hope? or disappointment?
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