Geographic Alliance of Iowa

Fiction, Geography, and Migration for the High School or University Level Student

Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath

Objective: TSW read the book citing specific examples of the role of geography in the story in geography field notes.

Goal: To read fiction for geography content.

Procedures:
1. Assign students to read Grapes of Wrath and write geography field notes from the book. There will be a minimum of one entry per chapter. This would depend on the instructor and the book being used.
2. Make notes throughout the reading that must be typed and turned in. These notes must address the following: push/pull factors of migration, climate, economic geography, physiographic features, sense of place the characters had toward their place of origin and place of destination, human characteristics of place of origin and destination, movement, human environmental interaction.
3. Have a Socratic seminar to discuss the geography and issues in the book.

Criteria for Grapes of Wrath
Pick out pithy passages from the book and make field notes. The field notes are to reflect higher order thinking and are NOT to be simply copied phrases. Instead look for passages that develop a sense of place, ones where the script deals with human environmental relationships, region, and those dealing with migration/movement. Your field notes should reflect how geography affects the landscape, the characters, and develops the story line.

Use the following format:

Put your name and ID # at the top of each page and type notes or use a separate small notebook and hand write the notes.

04-24-00-01 (this is the first hypothetical entry). Give a short summary of what is happening and its relationship to geography.

Chapter 1: Steinbeck creates a great sense of place in chapter one where he describes Oklahoma. He tells how the window lights could not reach beyond the yard because of dust in the air. He further explains how houses that are closed tight and even protected by clothes wedged around doors and windows that dust could still be seen in the air. He describes how it settled like pollen on furniture and dishes. The description gives a sense of hopelessness to the task of keeping dust out of the houses. The relationship to geography is clearly a sense of place but also gives an apt account of an arid climate.

04-24-00-02 (this is the second hypothetical entry). Give a short summary of what is happening and its relationship to geography.

Chapter 20: In this passage the camp where they stopped was described. The camp is simply a collection of tents and shacks. The shacks are made of roofing paper, moldy carpet, and rusty corrugated iron. They stop by a steep incline giving the reader the idea this might be a place where there were gullies caused from water erosion. The sense of place again is one of very poor economic conditions with little housing available. The migrants are being forced to live in unsanitary and what we today would consider 3^rd world conditions.

Continue with these until the end of the book. You may have many one day and few another but you must have a minimum of one per chapter.

Assessment: field notes