Great authors have the ability to take you into a different world simply by only sharing to you what’s inside their head. To each of us the world is a completely different place, and it feels different to all of us based on our own experiences. The Grapes of Wrath, and The Color Purple are both written in the same time period, around the late 1930’s early 1940’s. The Grapes of Wrath focused on the depression, while The Color Purple focused on racism and brutality towards blacks, and the issues they face with each other. As these are so varied, it shows you how different both of these authors wrote.
John Steinbeck writing was pessimistic, he often wrote in a direct and cut-throat sort of way, such as “... the dog, a blot of blood and tangled, burst intestines, kicked slowly in the road.” (pg 44) He writes with very little emotion, he does this in a way to really allow you to get into the times and how the characters thought. During the Depression, many people were numb, and felt very defeated. Steinbeck’s writing style complements this by showing a lack of emotion and description. Steinbeck also has an enjoyable view point that he switches quite often. He would switch from the Joad family viewpoint, (still in third person, however) to the immigrants and poverty-stricken people. He does this to allow you to see how it’s like on the inside, and up close and personal, while you are following the Joads, and then to see how it is looking on the outside, as if you were God or some other being watching the world. This gives you the knowledge of just how bad the Great Depression was, and its impact on not only the Joads, but on all families.
Although The Color Purple is written in a letter form, in the direct viewpoint of Celie, an actual character in the story, Celie is so numb from the abuse of her childhood and adulthood that Alice Walker also writes in a sort of numb way, which many associate with being a pessimistic viewpoint as well. Walker does something successfully however that many cannot do, and that is being able to write without using quotation marks. Celie does not use quotation marks either because she is uneducated, or because she is writing letters to Nettie and she feels it unnecessary, or a little of both, Walker is granted the ability to write without quotations, and she does this very successfully, as the reader still has the ability to understand what each character is saying, what is unravelling in the plot, and feels as if it is more so a conversation or letter, and that they are Nettie receiving it. Walker seemed to try to make this sort of impact by switching back to the Joad family, but didn’t quite get the closeness to the Joads for the reader as the reader felt towards Celie or Nettie, because of the letter form of the story.
Both Steinbeck and Walker did a phenomenal job of making you believe the characters were real, and had actually existed during their time. Both authors added accents to the characters that would’ve likely had at the time, such as Steinbeck here, “ He ain't gonna look natural. We'll wrop him up." (pg 95) Ain’t and wrop are both modified to make the reader know how it would sound to hear those characters in person. Walker did it here, “I tell her she can’t be all the time going to visit her sister. Us married now, I tell her. Your place is here with the children.
She say, I’ll take the children with me.” (pg 29) By both authors doing this it allowed you to connect with the characters, and allowed them to seem more tangible and real.
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