Chapter 25 begins with an omniscient third person
description of California's land and productivity. The sentences are long, and the
diction is formal and poetic, almost biblical, as Steinbeck describes the beauty of the
fruit plants and the hard work that goes into growing
them.
In the sixth paragraph, the chapter shifts abruptly
into a gruff, first person voice, presumably the voice of a farmer: "Cent and a half a
pound. Hell, we can't pick 'em for that." Now the descriptions show fruit dropping from
trees and rotting on the ground as farmers grapple with the economic impossibility of
profiting from the food they produce. A farmer makes rotting fruit into bad wine, saying
cynically, "Oh, well. It has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get
drunk."
From there, the chapter shifts back to an
omniscient narrator and sweeping descriptions, but the tone is much darker. Now the
narrator speaks of "great sorrow" as poor people die of malnutrition while crops rot.
These rotting crops are directly compared to the anger that is beginning to fester in
the hungry: "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing
heavy."
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