Abstract "Let us Now Praise Famous Men", James Agee and Walker Evans' study of three tenement families living in 1930s dustbowl America, is both a failure and a great artistic work. The paper explains how the book is a work of art because it invested dignity and the worthiness of being a photographic and journalistic subject to some of the poorest and least recognized members of American society. The Gudgers, the Woods, and the Ricketts are respectively given the same visual and prosaic poetry, honor, and valorizing treatment as might be conferred upon President Roosevelt himself. It points out however, that because of the limits of the photographic and written medium, even the reality of the medium somewhat limits the portrayal, and renders exotic their poverty and privation.
From the Paper "It is for this reason that the book is a failure-a failure that Agee set out to commit, as he admits in his opening. "It seems to be curious, not to say obscene and thoroughly terrifying," he begins in his introduction, that "an organ of journalism," of which he and the photographer Evans were an instrument, could pry into the lives of defenseless human beings, "in the name of science and of honest journalism. (7-8) He knows his goal of conveying dignity to the farmers will fail, but he will try. And "If I bore you, that is that." (9) In other words, Agee writes, he will attempt to show reality, in all of the glory of the boredom of human, daily life, rather than inscribing the journalistic question of 'what is the story?' onto the truth of representation."
Examines the inter-chapters in John Steinbecks "Grapes of Wrath" which provide the social background and historical information and act as a counterbalance to the highly emotional tale of the Joads.
3,301 words (approx. 13.2 pages), 0 sources, 2002, $ 94.95
Abstract This paper shows how, without the inter-chapters, the "Grapes of Wrath" would simply be the sad story of dust bowl migrants in California. By adding social, political, and historical background Steinbeck has transformed a sob story into social analysis.
From the Paper "These interchapters serve two main functions. First by presenting the social background they serve to amplify the pattern of action created by the Joad family. 13 of the 16 interchapters are largely devoted to this purpose. For example, chapter 1 describes in panoramic terms the drought that forces the migrants off their land. Chapter 5 is mostly a dialog between two generalized forces, the banks and the farmers, presenting in archetype the conflict in which the Joads are enmeshed. Chapters 7 and 9 depict, respectively, the buying of jalopies and the selling of household goods. Chapter 11 describes at length a decaying and deserted house that is the prototype of all the houses abandoned in the dust bowl. Other chapters explore, through the collage technique of chapters 7 and 9, the nature of that new, nomadic society which the Joads are helping to form. (14, 17, 23). Almost every aspect of the Joads? adventures is enlarged in the interchapters and seen as part of the social climate."
