Place in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and The Red Pony

Abstract

This thesis examines the literary places in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and The Red Pony (1933). In the thesis I analyze how literary places, such as the ones in these two aforementioned novels, are created. The creation of these places is divided into three main categories: creating the place through physicality, forming it through cultural or social references and creating it through a personal connection or individual affect. These categories are used in the analysis that focuses on The Grapes of Wrath.

In this thesis, I argue that the use of imagery and chronotope create the physical place. In addition, the cultural and social place is created through the shifting focalization that reveals differing cultural values and significance. Furthermore, place is also envisioned through personal relationship or attachment, for example memory and identity. These three categories are based on the theory of analyzing place by the ecocritic Lawrence Buell. His theory and texts on environment and place work as the basis of the analysis. The thesis also examines place attachment in The Red Pony through Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope and Martin Heidegger’s concept of Being. The approach of the thesis is ecocritical, and its focus is also to discuss the human-nature relationship in Steinbeck’s fiction as well as argue that examining place centered literature can prove to be meaningful in understanding the role of humans within their environment. The thesis also briefly examines the ideas of representing and constructing nature in relation to ecocriticism and nature writing.