Why does Steinbeck choose to structure the novel as he does, with alternating macrocosmic and microcosmic chapters?
Use at least one specific pairing of chapters to examine Steinbeck’s technique. In alternating macrocosmic with microcosmic chapters, Steinbeck manages to give The Grapes of Wrath both particularity and universality. While the novel deals with timeless themes, the experiences of the Joad family and other “Okies” illustrate these themes in concrete ways. Steinbeck thus prevents his novel from becoming an abstract treatise on social theory; at the same time, he keeps it from becoming too time-bound. The story is simultaneously about the Great Depression and about human life in general (suitably so, since the connection of all human life is the novel’s dominant theme). For example, in Chapter 5, readers learn about “the monster”: The reified banking system that is driving farmers off their land. This chapter gives us an appreciation of the complicated social forces at work during the Depression, forces which, as the text says, men created but could not ultimately control. Chapter 6, howev
