Monday, October 1, 2012

Chapter 11


My favorite chapter in the book is chapter 11. This is my favorite chapter because it’s short, but also because it’s descriptive for example on page 115 when he says “And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is life and vitality, there is breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and eyes are alive.” This just really stood out to me because I was able to see the horses standing on the straw and I could them champing on the hay and I could see the eyes and ears and hear the breathing. The theme that I thought was important was the theme of abandonment; people just dropped everything and left. I thought that was important because people were very attached the their land it was how they lived and fed their own families, so just having to leave everything and not know where you will end up or if you will find work is just mind blowing

                My favorite passage is from the same chapter and on page 115 as well. “The heat goes out of it like the living heat leaves a corpse.”  This I my favorite passage because I think it’s interesting how he compares the tractor and the heat leaving it to heat leaving a human corpse.he gones on later to talk about how the farmers didn’t come to the fields and that put the heat or worth of living out of somebody.
-Katie-

6 comments:

  1. Good thoughts here! I found it neat just how detailed the writing can get in describing the creatures of the land. In a way it's like an underlying story. We have the description of the turtle, dogs, and now horses. Awesome! I love it when I read a story and it's so in depth that you begin to picture the scene and you feel the same emotions that the characters in the story feel. What a blessing that is, it makes reading that much less laborious.

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  2. Chapter 11 is very descriptive and metaphorical. The way Steinbeck compares horses and the land, and tractors and the land is very powerful. It shows us how many people felt about the tractors coming in and taking over the land.

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  3. I like this passage too. He is comparing the heat leaving the tractor to a corpse, basically saying that the tractor is causing death. The family's don't like the tractor anymore than they like seeing a corpse.

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  4. it was very detailed and informative right from the beginning of the chapter definitely a good one and one that sticks out!

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  5. The passages that you shared showed great sense details and figurative language. I agree that you can see the horse, doing what horses do.

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  6. Descriptive writing is prevalent throughout the book. I find it interesting how some people are really placed into the atmosphere of the book by some passages, and others by completely different ones. For example, I completely read right over this one, maybe because nature or more specifically horses don't relate to me personally.

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